The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Audio/Video: Lee Fennell, "Risk Reversals"

This week's episode of the Faculty Podcast is a recording of Lee Fennell's October 22nd Chicago's Best Ideas lecture on "Risk Reversals" (video has also been added to Bryan Hart's writeup of the talk).

As a refresher, here's Prof. Fennell's description of the talk:

Law often allocates risk, as through tort doctrines. Should people be able to undo or "reverse" such risk allocations by, for example, selling their rights to any claims that may later develop? Scholars have interestingly examined this question, as well as many other innovative ideas for rearranging risk outside of traditional insurance markets. This talk focuses attention on some related but underexplored questions surrounding risk reversibility itself—such as the optimal amount of stickiness in society's default risk allocations, the effects of heterogeneity in risk arrangements, and the implications (cognitive and otherwise) of starting from one risk baseline rather than another.

Brian Leiter and Scott Shapiro: "Even Further Beyond the Hart-Dworkin Debate"

This past weekend, John P. Wilson Professor of Law Brian Leiter took part in a Bloggingheads.tv "diavlog" with Yale's Scott Shapiro entitled "Even Further Beyond the Hart-Dworkin Debate." The entire conversation is embedded below, or you can jump to individual topics here: 

• A short primer on legal philosophy (06:06)
• Hart’s legal positivism vs. Dworkin’s (quasi-)natural law theory (13:45)
• Explaining theoretical disagreement: a challenge for positivism (16:56)
• Is theoretical disagreement so rare it needs no explanation? (09:10)
• Can a novel way of interpreting law be offered in good faith? (11:34)
• Brian and Scott explain why they are positivists (05:28)        

Douglas Baird on Proposed GM Bailout

Last week, Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law Douglas Baird appeared on NPR's Morning Edition to discuss the proposed government bailout of GM. You can listen to Prof. Baird on NPR's website.

Update: Prof. Baird also appeared on CNN on Friday to discuss GM. You can read the transcript here.

Student Blogger - Chicago’s Best Ideas: Dean Saul Levmore on “The Internet’s Anonymity Problem”

Update: Dean Levmore's talk is now available as an .mp3 file.

The walls of the Law School's bathroom stalls used to display the student body's complaints about professors and fellow students, but the internet made those walls obsolete. Is the internet different from the bathroom stalls in some fundamental way? Does the internet mark a break from the paradigm of previous media? Dean Levmore does not think so.

On Tuesday, November 11, Dean Saul Levmore gave a talk on "The Internet's Anonymity Problem" as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. His main contention is that the internet is not different from other media and should be subject to the same legal regime. Currently, it is not; § 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that internet service providers (ISPs) are not publishers with regard to user-generated content, so they are for the most part not responsible for online torts committed by their users. (One questioner pointed to Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v Roommates.com (9th Cir 2008) (en banc), where Judge Kozinski wrote an opinion holding a website liable under the Fair Housing Act for discrimination committed by its users, but Levmore remarked that the case is an outlier because, after all, it was written by Judge Kozinski.) If a newspaper, on the other hand, publishes a defamatory letter to the editor, the newspaper may be sued. The most commonly cited reason for the nonpublisher rule in the legislative history of the Act is that the internet is a new medium, so it should be allowed to develop and flourish. But the Act was passed twelve years ago, and the internet has matured since then, so it is time to take stock.

Richard Epstein on Happiness, Inequality, and Envy

The Library of Economics and Liberty has posted an episode of their podcast "EconTalk," in which Chicago's James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Richard Epstein speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the relationship between happiness and wealth, the effects of inequality on happiness, and the economics of envy and altruism.

Audio/Video: Mary Anne Case on State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages

If you've ever wondered what Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case and former Chicago professor (and current Supreme Court Justice) Antonin Scalia might actually agree on, have we got a Halloween treat for you. The first Chicago's Best Ideas talk of the year, held on October 1, featured Professor Case discussing "Why Evangelical Protestants are Right When They Say that State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages and What the Law Should Do About It." Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download an .mp3 or .mov file for your portable media player.

Financial Crisis Double Feature

Like most everyone else, the Law School faculty are talking about the current financial crisis and governments' attempts to resolve it. So we've combined last week's scheduled Faculty Podcast with this week's scheduled Open Minds podcast to bring you two recent faculty panels about the bailout plan. The first, recorded on October 9th and sponsored by the Federalist Society, featured Douglas Baird, Anupam Chander, Rosalind Dixon, and M. Todd Henderson. The second, recorded on October 15th, was sponsored by the Law School Democrats and Law School Republicans and included  Randy Picker, Douglas Baird, M. Todd Henderson, and the GSB's John Cochrane (you can also read a summary of the panel here).

Law.com Names Faculty Podcast to Top Ten List

Over on Law.com, Robert Ambrogi has provided a list of "Ten Legal Podcasts to Keep You Informed," which features our own Faculty Podcast. If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do so via iTunes or any other podcatcher to get informative, timely talks by Chicago faculty and distinguished visitors delivered directly to your computer.

Karl Llewellyn on Marriage and the Family

For this week's Faculty Podcast, we invite you to step into the Wayback Machine for a glimpse of the Law School some 50 years ago. One of the leading legal scholars of his generation, Karl Llewellyn taught at Chicago from 1951 until his death in 1962. In this undated classroom recording, he takes an often light-hearted look at the implicit legal structures of what was at the time considered the "typical" American family. Listen to the end, and you'll also hear him discuss with his students their upcoming exam.

Audio: Adam Samaha, "Muskets and Glocks: The Second Amendment Reborn?"

Back in May, Assistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar Adam Samaha addressed the Law School's annual Loop Luncheon. In his talk, Professor Samaha made some rather accurate predictions about the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court's then-pending decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. He also addressed the issues that would be raised by the Court's decision and made some predictions about the next stages of the battle over the Second Amendment. You can listen to the full talk here.