A Day in the Life

Announcing the New Student Events Podcast

In recent months, here at the Law School we've seen an increasing number of student organizations start recording their events for online distribution. Faced with an embarassment of riches, we've decided to launch a new podcast dedicated just to student org-sponsored events, which we're calling "Open Minds" (if you've seen the fences around the fountain construction lately, you'll catch the reference). And don't worry -- student events featuring Law School faculty will be added to both podcasts feeds, so you won't miss any of that Chicago audio goodness.

You can subscribe to Open Minds via iTunes or using the podcatcher of your choice.

Malani CBI: Valuing Laws as Local Amenities

On Wednesday, April 25, 2007, Professor Anup Malani delivered a Chicago's Best Ideas talk on "Valuing Laws as Local Amenities." Professor Malani thinks we go wrong in trying to determine the value of a law only by its direct effects - he argues that by looking at the effect that any given law has on wages and property values, we can determine the relative value of all laws. This allows us to treat laws just like any other community amenities, such as the fixing of potholes or the building of a swimming pool. Listen to the talk here, and read the full blurb below:

"The conventional approach to evaluating a law is to examine its effect on proximate behavior.  To evaluate a criminal law, for example, this approach would look to its effects on the crime rate.  In this lecture, Professor Malani argues that laws should instead be judged by the extent to which they raise housing prices and lower wages.  The logic is that the value of a law, much like the value of a lake or a public school, is capitalized into local housing and labor markets.  Desirable laws increase housing prices and decrease wages because more people want to live in the relevant jurisdiction; undesirable laws have the opposite effects.  Evaluating laws in this manner has several advantages.  It employs a more direct proxy for what economists call “utility.”  Moreover, it accounts for all the effects of a law, including hard-to-measure outcomes, unintended consequences, and enforcement costs."

Thurgood Marshall as Solicitor General

The Black Law Students Association has been presenting a series of talks in honor of the 40th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court. The speaker's list has been impressive, and the third entry into the series is no exception. Drew Days III, former U.S. Solicitor General (under President Clinton) and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights (under President Carter), delivered the third address in the series on April 5, 2007. Professor Days spoke about Justice Marshall's career as a Solicitor General of the United States. Listen to the talk here.

How FDR Paved the Way to Brown v. The Board of Education

The Black Law Students Association is the Law School's chapter of a very active national organization. BLSA is very active at the Law School, planning many academic and social events. This year, BLSA is sponsoring a series of lectures commemorating Thurgood Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court. The second in this series took place a few weeks ago, when Kevin McMahon of Trinity College discussed “How FDR Paved the Way to Brown v. The Board of Education.” Professor McMahon, author of Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race, puts forth evidence that through his appointments to key judgeships and through the retooling of the Justice Department, President Franklin Roosevelt intentionally constructed the legal framework that made the outlawing of segregation possible. Listen to the talk here. (If you would like to follow along with Prof. McMahon’s PowerPoint presentation, you may download them here: Download kevin_mcmahon_power_point_slides.ppt)

How's My Driving?

We've had Chicago's Best Ideas talks on a wide variety of topics. Some of them are historical, some contemporary, some obscure, some pedestrian. I've never seen one that had as wide-ranging appeal as the one we had on January 24, because it dealt with a subject that nearly every one of our students had intimate experience with: driving. Lior Strahilevitz delivered a talk on his notion that we should all be subject to a program like the "How's My Driving?" program you see on the backs of trucks. The truck program saves lives, and Professor Stahilevitz argues that in this case, more is better. Imagine it - someone cuts you off on the highway and you no longer have to just silently fume or yell at someone who can't hear you. Under this program, you report the bad driver! Intrinsically fascinating, Professor Stahilevitz's presentation caused half the packed room to raise hands for questions. You can hear this talk here.

Culling Chickens

Ronald H. Coase has been a member of the Law School's faculty since 1964. He won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for, among other things, the Coase Theorem. To this day he is the only Nobel Laureate to serve full time on the faculty of an American law school. In his honor, we have been hosting the annual Ronald H. Coase Lecture in Law and Economics since 1992. The lecture is geared towards our first year law students, so we hope that it will be accessible to you as well.

This year's Coase Lecture, on January 23, 2007, was delivered by Professor Anup Malani and titled "Culling Chickens." Professor Malani spoke about prevention of the spread of avian flu in chickens, particularly, although not exclusively, in third world countries. Much of the discussion centered around the economic principles that go into determining the appropriate rate to pay for potentially-diseased chickens in order to ensure that farmers will indeed turn them over for slaughter.  A lively Q&A followed, and you can listen to the whole thing here.

The Audio Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is a masterpiece of a governing document, but it’s also quite poetic. The beauty of the text is hard to appreciate on paper, but when it’s read out loud, you can really hear the elegance of it. Never heard it read out loud, you say? Then today’s your lucky day. David Currie, one of our esteemed faculty members and one of the country’s leading constitutional law scholars, read aloud the entire document as a graduation present to the Class of 2006. We’ve provided the audio file as a podcast that you can download here, and even broken it out for you article by article, amendment by amendment on the Socrates section of our website.

Professor Samaha Previews the Supreme Court Term

As you may know, the Supreme Court begins hearing cases each year on the First Monday in October. Each year, the Law School asks a faculty member to deliver a "First Monday" lecture in several cities in honor of the opening of the Supreme Court term. These lectures vary wildly in topic and scope, depending on what the speaker thinks the upcoming term will hold. Needless to say, the Supreme Court has been the subject of much discussion since the 2005 First Monday lecture, so Professor Adam Samaha's talk called "Meet the New Boss" was both well-attended and well-received. Professor Samaha is an engaging speaker, and the alumni who attended the talk got to hear not only about what Professor Samaha thinks of certain cases that the Court will hear this term, but also how the new swing vote on the Court may not come from the Justice many people expect. This talk is very accessible, even to people who have not yet taken any classes in law, so I encourage you to listen and enjoy. Professor Samaha often teaches first year students, by the way. You can listen to the podcast of the talk here, and other podcasts from the Law School here.

Cass Sunstein on "Libertarian Paternalism"

Lunchtime talks are a major part of life here at Chicago.

Student groups or the administration provide a speaker - and usually lunch - and a large percentage of our students use their lunch hours to come hear them. One of the most popular series of talks we offer is the Chicago's Best Ideas series. We started this series for our Centennial five years ago, and it was so popular, we've kept doing it. The speakers are our own faculty members, and they discuss ideas from their own work or Chicago's history that represent the best of what the Law School has to offer. Since last fall, we've been recording and podcasting these talks. On Tuesday, October 3, Cass Sunstein delivered the first CBI of the academic year. His title was "Nudge: The Gentle Power of Libertarian Paternalism." The room was packed, as usual for Professor Sunstein, and the discussion was lively. The topic was quintessential behavioral law and econ, and was quite interesting (even to those who aren't quite sure what "behavioral law and econ" is).

Here's Professor Sunstein's blurb about the talk: "The idea of libertarian paternalism might seem to be an oxymoron, but it is both possible and desirable for private and public institutions to influence behavior while also respecting freedom of choice. Often people's preferences are unclear and ill-formed, and their choices will inevitably be influenced by default rules, framing effects, and starting points. In these circumstances, a form of paternalism cannot be avoided. Equipped with an understanding of behavioral findings of bounded rationality and bounded self-control, libertarian paternalists should attempt to steer people's choices in welfare-promoting directions without eliminating freedom of choice. It is also possible to show how a libertarian paternalist might select among the possible options and to assess how much choice to offer. Examples are given from many areas, including savings behavior, labor law, and consumer protection."

Confused? Intrigued? Want to hear what Professor Sunstein sounds like? Listen here.