Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Is now available here. It is entitled, “Originalism, Pragmatism, and the Constitution.” The Abstract: The preceding Outlook discussed the liberal-progressive vision for a “Constitution in 2020”–wedded to the constitutional apparatus of the New Deal and bent on entrenching, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s capable leadership, a European-style welfare state. This Outlook contrasts the liberal project […]

On the Roberts-Friendly issue raised by Orin, it is clear that this raises a key question to ask Roberts at his confirmation hearing–“What is chicken?” (This post is for all my Contracts law students through the years…). For more on all chicken law issues, I refer you, of course, to the classic treatment by Jim […]

This is an actual quote from a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics from the HHS/FTC Joint Workshop on obesity and marketing a few weeks back (p. 142 of the Hearing transcript) expressing the Academy’s support for a ban on advertising directed at children as a tool to fight children’s obesity: Contrast that with […]

Conglomerate is hosting a forum on the Disney decision, featuring many leading commentators.

My new article, “Is Forum-Shopping Corrupting America’s Bankruptcy Courts? Review of Lynn M. Lopucki, Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts,” (forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal) is now available for download on SSRN and BEPress. As the title indicates, this is a book review of essay of Lynn LoPucki’s […]

Florida State’s President T.K. Wetherell is making rumblings that it will sue if the NCAA follows through with its prohibition on allowing teams with “hostile or abusive” mascots from entering postseason tournaments: “We’re not going to change the name – that’s not an option,” Wetherell told the Tallahassee Democrat Friday evening. “We would not do […]

Tracey George of Vanderbilt has another article on rankings from the same symposium that Andy Morriss has been blogging on the past few days. Her paper is “An Emprical Study of Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Top Law Schools” and is available on SSRN. The paper uses a variety of measures to compile a rank the […]

I received this in an email today from the campaign of Jerry Kilgore, who is running for VA Governor: Senator George Allen routinely reminds us that a bumper sticker is worth $200 in free advertising or $300 if on a pick-up truck or S.U.V. Why in the world would a bumper sticker on a “pick-up […]

My imnpression is that liberals and the left have been somewhat divided in their response to Kelo (unlike conservatives and libertarians who seem to be largely critical, with a few exceptions). Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders both seem to be critical of Kelo, Nancy Pelosi seems to be ok with it. Today’s Washington Times ran […]

Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge, has this interesting column on the differences between male and female brains in the New York Times. Update: A Commenter points me to this post and discussion on Althouse on this column. Some interesting stuff there.

The Federalist Society’s report from the ABA Convention included this partial summary of one panel: Supreme Court Review Ken Starr was one of three panelists at the ABA convention’s Supreme Court Review. He was joined by Yale Professor Drew Days and Susan Bandes of Chicago Law School. The panel summarized and commented on the biggest […]

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Hamilton alumni have received a letter from the college’s chairman of the board endorsing the official candidates, while enforcing limits on communications by the petition candidates (story available here): Trustee candidates, who seek to join Hamilton’s board, were allotted 100 words for a written statement that accompanies the […]

Professor KC Johnson comments on a new $15 million diversity initiative at Columbia. Here’s the most amazing part to me: In addition to recruiting minority and female professors, especially in the sciences, the university could use the money to hire white men “who, through their scholarship and teaching and mentoring, in some way promote the […]

Newmark’s Door has a ranking of the top Econmics Blogs. (HT: Andrew Samwick at Vox Baby). A special shout-out to my GMU Economics colleagues at Marginal Revolution, Cafe Hayek, Knowledge Problem, and Econlog, all of whom fare pretty well on at least some of the measures used (and all of which I read regularly).

I noticed this article on the payola settlement the other day, which dusted off old memories from my Econ grad student days reading Coase explaining the efficiency of payola in the recording industry. Apparently some lessons have to be relearned every generation or so. Josh Wright guest-blogging on the Conglomerate has an excellent analysis of […]