The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Video: Sunstein and Thaler on "Nudge" and Noodles

Via the Research at Chicago site:

[Richard] Thaler and [Cass] Sunstein reminisce at their favorite Hyde Park lunch spot, Noodles, where they say they did some of their best work on the book. Noodles was so important to the creative process, it even made the acknowledgments. The two talk about what each brought to the project, the origin of the elephants on the book cover, their fear of forms, and their hopes for a new political consensus in the country.

Related Links:

• Nudge Blog
• Nudge Website

Audio/Video: Geof Stone, "The World of the Framers: A Christian Nation?"

It has become commonplace in American political discourse for Christian evangelicals to assert that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and that in recent decades secularists have gained control and distorted our nation's founding traditions and values. In this lecture, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Geoffrey Stone examines the beliefs of the Framers on this question. What did they think about Christianity, about the role of Christianity in the American nation, and about the relationship between religion generally and self-governance? The answers to these questions are important not only to constitutional interpretation, but even more fundamentally to an understanding of who we are – and who we are supposed to be – as a nation.

This talk was recorded April 21, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file or .mp3 file.

Audio/Video: Eric Posner and Henry Farrell, "Readers Like You"

Earlier this week on bloggingheads.tv, Chicago's Eric Posner engaged George Washington University's Henry Farrell in a wide-ranging discussion that explores a variety of issues, from the effect of the blogosphere on politics to the question of whether aggressive counterterrorism measures actually nurture militant Islamism.

The clip below features a portion of the discussion concerning the processing of enemy combatants; the full video (as well as downloadable audio, if that's more your style) is available here.

Audio/Video: Richard Epstein Asks, "Is the Administrative State Consistent with the Rule of Law?"

On January 29, the always entertaining Richard Epstein presented a Chicago's Best Ideas talk entitled "Is the Administrative State Consistent with the Rule of Law?" Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file or .mp3 file.

Here is the descriptive blurb that was on the poster for the talk:

Without question, the most distinctive feature of the modern social democratic state is the rise of administrative agencies, which at the federal level function as a shadowy Fourth Branch of government that fits uneasily into our constitutional scheme of separation of powers, and which at the state level oversee vast swaths of economic activity.

Defenders of the current administrative setup claim the elaborate procedural safeguards built into today’s administrative law effectively blunt the risk of arbitrary power, whose exercise has always been in tension with the rule of law. In this talk, Professor Epstein will explain why he thinks the massive discretion routinely confided in administrative agencies is in fact inconsistent with the rule of law on a wide range of matters dealing with economic liberties, tort liability, private property, and the institutional autonomy of voluntary associations.

Audio: Randy Picker's Hooding Ceremony Address

Friday was graduation day here at the Law School, so please join us in wishing heartfelt congratulations to the Class of 2008 and to their families. As is tradition, along with the University's graduation ceremony, the Law School hosted a hooding ceremony in Rockefeller Chapel. During this ceremony, graduates receive the distinctive purple hood that is worn during formal academic events by those who hold degrees in law.

This year's faculty speaker at the hooding ceremony was Randy Picker, Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law, and a frequent contributor to this blog. You can listen to Randy's address here; he was introduced by Dean Saul Levmore.

Update: A transcript of Professor Picker's speech is also available.

Video: Cass Sunstein and Eugene Volokh on Information Cocoons

Yesterday, Bloggingheads.tv posted a discussion between Cass Sunstein and Eugene Volokh of UCLA (and the Volokh Conspiracy), in which they touch on questions of fairness, balkanization, serendipity, and defamation in the discourse of the blogosphere.

Martha Nussbaum: The 2008 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture

On May 14, Martha Nussbaum presented the 2008 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture. The Ryerson Lectures grew out of a 1972 bequest to the University by Nora and Edward L. Ryerson, a former Chairman of the Board. The University's faculty selects each Ryerson Lecturer based on a consensus that a particular scholar has made research contributions of lasting significance. Video of Professor Nussbaum's lecture, which was  entitled "Equal Respect for Conscience: The Roots of a Moral and Legal Tradition," is embedded below, and an .mp3 is also available.

Audio/Video: Conference on "Contested Commodities"

Last month, the Law School's Law and Economics Program hosted a conference  entitled "Contested Commodities: Reframing the Debate on Financial Incentives in the Supply of Genetic Materials." The conference, which was organized by Visiting Professor of Law Michele Goodwin, looked at the law, economics, and ethics of the burgeoning market for human genetic materials ranging from blood, sperm, and ova to harvested organs and even newborn babies. The keynote address (video of which is embedded below) was by Richard Epstein, and audio files of all of the panels are available from the conference webpage.

 

Video: Mary Anne Case on "Feminist Fundamentalism"

On April 9, Mary Anne Case, Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, gave a Chicago's Best Ideas talk entitled "Feminist Fundamentalism."

At a time when so many different religious fundamentalisms are coming to the fore and demanding legal recognition, in this talk Prof. Case seeks to vindicate feminist fundamentalism, defined as an uncompromising commitment to the equality of the sexes as intense and at least as worthy of respect as, for example, a religiously or culturally based commitment to female subordination or fixed sex roles.

Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file. Just want to listen to the talk? An .mp3 file is also available.

Audio: Abner Mikva and Jason Huber on the Appellate Advocacy Clinic

It's been an exciting year for clinical education at the Law School, with two new programs being added (the Exoneration Project and the recently announced Federal Criminal Justice Project) and the Mandel Clinic celebrating its 50th anniversary. We plan to bring you much more clinic-related content in the near future, including audio and video of the Mandel Clinic's 50th Anniversary Symposium; in the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy a brief podcast of Judge Abner Mikva and Clinical Instructor Jason Huber discussing the work and  history of the Appellate Advocacy Project. This talk was recorded on April 14, 2008 as part of the Goodwin and Procter Clinics in Action Lunch Series, and also featured current students discussing their experiences working in appellate advocacy (though these are not included in the recording).