Category Archives: Law & Society

Markets and other human institutions (quotation)

Posted on 2013-12-01 by

I thought the following quotation from Cosma Shalizi, one of my favorites, seemed appropriate in light of my previous post on Evangelii Gaudium: There is a fundamental level at which Marx’s nightmare vision is right: capitalism, the market system, whatever … Continue reading →

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Some thoughts from a nonbeliever on Evangelii Gaudium

Posted on 2013-11-30 by

One of the big bits of international news this week was the release by the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Francis’s first major official statement, Evangelii Gaudium (translated in English as “The Joy of the Gospel”). This “apostolic exhortation” set … Continue reading →

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On misrepresenting IQ

There’s been a lot of talk in my Twitter timeline about Boris Johnson and IQ lately. Apparently the Mayor of London thinks that some people really are more worthy than others. This controversy spilled over into the comments of a … Continue reading →

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What Congress should do now

Posted on 2013-10-18 by

In a statement today, the President spoke about what he wants to see from a long-term budget deal. But the voices of ordinary people ought to be heard, too, so here are my wishes, some of them process-related and some … Continue reading →

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Another pearl from Anderson’s article

Posted on 2013-09-27 by

To summarize thus far, opaque sentences require hard work to fully (as opposed to one-sidedly) interpret. Still, the typical six-year-old is conversationally fluent in them. In [] the high-stakes world of legal reasoning, it is surprising that all the king’s … Continue reading →

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How courts are like children

Posted on 2013-09-27 by

Besides courts, two other much-studied populations who have trouble handling opacity are children under the age of four to six and older children with diagnoses on the autism spectrum. —Jill Anderson, “Misreading Like a Lawyer: Cognitive Bias in Statutory Interpretation”, … Continue reading →

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