My blog post, “Experimenting in Same-Sex Marriage and Other Matters,” raised questions about the relation between rights and consequences. Some commentators thought I was arguing that constitutional rights should be curbed if they had some bad consequences. I think this was based on misunderstanding of my position. It true that I think the determining what […]
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Promoting Limited Government and More Informed Decision Making
Thanks so much to Ilya for his generous post on Accelerating Democracy. I see Ilya’s and my projects not as antagonistic but essentially complementary. I share Ilya’s belief that more limited government is likely better government. I thus expect that that by providing more accurate information about policy results, more people will move over time […]
Answers to Ed Whelan’s Questions
Over on Bench Memos Ed Whelan asks some questions. QUESTION: So, Randy and Jonathan, do you agree with your co-signatory Ilya Somin that if DOMA is invalidated on federalism grounds, a couple that enters into a lawful same-sex marriage in one state will be entitled to receive federal marriage benefits when they move to a state that […]
Combating Bias: More Reason to Favor Prediction Markets and Oppose Earmarks
The information delivered by new technologies about policy results will be more effective insofar as it changes people’s minds. But many people are biased. They hold to their preconceptions about the wisdom of policy, regardless of the new evidence presented. Thus, another urgent task for adapting to technological acceleration is to help democracy better update […]
Orthodox Easter: What’s up with that? — Part 2
Yesterday, I posted about the difference between the Gregorian calendar that we use in the West and the Julian calendar that’s still used by most Eastern Orthodox churches. There’s a 13-day difference between them for the period between 1900 and 2100, so any given day (e.g. October 12) shows up 13 days later on the […]
Congratulations to Orin on Having His Blog Post Cited in a First Circuit Opinion
Court citations to blog posts are still rare enough — unless you are Sentencing Law & Policy — that I thought it was worth mentioning. From United States v. Sparks (1st Cir. Mar. 26, 2013): The government does not dispute that Sparks, who did not own the Chrysler but was its usual driver, has standing […]
Orthodox Easter: What’s up with that?
Easter is this Sunday, March 31. But Orthodox Easter, celebrated by most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church (including the Russian Orthodox Church) and some Oriental Orthodox churches, is May 5 this year, a full five weeks after Easter as celebrated by Western Christian churches. (As a footnote, you may listen to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter […]
Can the Federal Government Define “Property” For Purposes of Federal Law?
In his most recent post, my co-blogger Randy Barnett writes that “defining marriage — like defining property — is a traditional function of the states.” He continues: [T]hat is crazy. It would be like saying you “own” your home under the property law of California, but you don’t “own” your home “for purposes of federal […]
Prediction Markets and the Danger of Manipulation
The most frequent critique of my proposal to legalize prediction markets stemmed from fear of manipulation or gaming. A specific concern is that manipulators will choose to skew the markets at the time of some democratic event, such as a vote in Congress. For instance, those who stand to gain from a President’s stimulus package […]
The Chief Justice’s Excellent Hypothetical: Under Our System of Federalism, Can You Be Both Married and Unmarried at the Same Time?
In oral argument yesterday, the Chief Justice asked Solicitor General Verrilli what Ed Whelan on Bench Memos thought was a killer question: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Suppose your — you agree that Congress could go the other way, right? Congress could pass a new law today that says, We will give Federal benefits. When we say […]
Line-Standing Services at the Supreme Court
The New York Times Caucus blog had a recent article that touched on the lawfulness and propriety of hiring line-standing services for Supreme Court arguments: By hiring companies like LineStanding.com and Washington Express, people who want to hear the court arguments can pay for a proxy to hold their place in line hours or days […]
Congratulations to SCOTUSblog on Winning a Peabody Award
I’m on a family vacation this week, but I have a moment to post, so I wanted to congratulate SCOTUSblog on winning a Peabody Award. The Peabodies, which are now in their 72th year, were originally an award for broadcasting, but have expanded to cover “electronic media” more broadly. SCOTUSblog seems to be the first […]
Oral Argument Audio in United States v. Windsor, the DOMA Case
The audio of the argument, lasting almost 2 hours, is here. (If you want to listen to the merits discussion, start at the 54 minute mark.) Lyle Denniston’s take on the arguments at SCOTUSblog is here.
Experimenting in Same-Sex Marriage and Other Matters
We live in a golden age for empiricism. Pythagoras said the world is made up of numbers and that is the slogan of empiricists. But until this time of big data and exponential computer power, empiricism had an Achilles heel, because it lacked substantial processing capacity. Fortunately, the relentless increase in computational power and the […]
The Timing of the Same-Sex Marriage Case and Bickel’s Passive Virtues
When Ted Olson and David Boies filed their challenge to Prop 8 in 2009, there was a lot of debate about the timing of the case. Olson & Boies expressed their strong confidence that there were five votes on the Supreme Court for a national constitutional right to same-sex marriage. According to Olson & Boies, […]