Law and Economics

Supreme Court Term Limits

In the Friday, April 8, edition of The Wall Street Journal Northwestern University Law School professors Steven Calabresi and James Lindgren had a wonderfully interesting short opinion piece entitled "Supreme Gerontocracy."  The article is available here. 

Calabresi and Lindgren note that it has been almost 11 years since there was an opening on the U.S. Supreme Court and that this group of nine justices has served together longer than any other group in U.S. history.  This reflects, among other things, the fact that the average tenure of Supreme Court justices has increased significantly in the recent past. 

"From 1789 until 1970, justices served an average of 14.0 years.  Those who have stepped down since 1970, however, have served an average of 25.6 years.  ...  The reason for this is not hard to find, Recently, the average age at time of appointment has been 53, which is the same as the average age of appointment over the rest of American history.  The retirement age, however, has jumped from an average of 68 pre-1970 to 79 for justices retiring post-1970."   

And there have been costs to this increase.  Most significantly, some contend that "decrepitude has been a problem with the last 10 justices to retire." 

Calabresi and Lindgren think that an average tenure of 25.6 years is too long for this institution -- any governmental institution -- to operate effectively.  They note that none of the 50 states allows its supreme court justices to serve for life and that most developed countries have mandatory retirement ages for their supreme court justices. 

To correct the situation, Calabresi and Lindgren argue for "a constitutional amendment that would limit the justices to an 18-year-term with one seat opening up every two years." 

The authors are participating in a conference on "Reforming the Supreme Court" held at the Duke Law School on April 9.  You can read more about the conference here. 

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The Law and Economics of Blogging

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had been inspired to return to blogging by a talk that my friend and colleague Larry Ribstein gave at an IPLE (Illinois Program in Law and Economics) workshop last week.  Larry has now written up his wonderful remarks.  They're available on his webpage, here.  Well worth reading and thinking about. 

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Levitt and Dubner book

Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner have written Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.  I can't imagine who chose the title.  It is unfortunate in a number of ways, not the least of which is that the title will serve as a pejorative term for those who profess economics.  (Indeed, it has already been gleefully so used by one of my dear colleagues.)  More than that Steve Levitt, if it is he who is referred to as a "rogue economist," is not a rogue.  He is the most recent winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years since 1948 by the American Economics Association to the best economist under the age of 40. 

The book will be available Tuesday, April 12, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com here.  Happily for those of us who want more than the book, the authors have a blog, available here. 

I'll write a short review in the next couple of weeks. 

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More good reading

There has been a lot of discussion over the past year or so in blogs, faculty lounges, at conferences, and elsewhere on why academia is so very left-wing and, seemingly, out of step with the average sentiment in the US on lots of issues.  I have not a whisper of a shadow of a doubt that the typical US law school and university faculty are overwhelmingly politically left-leaning.  To take but one example, one would be hard pressed to find ten percent of the University of Illinois College of Law faculty (of approximately 35 good souls) willing to admit to having voted for George Bush (or for almost any Republican candidate for any office -- local, state, or federal).  (Nonetheless, I have felt that these differences are a bit exaggerated.) 

I have never found the reasons given for this state of affairs to be persuasive.  Why the center of gravity of law school and university faculties generally should be so far to the left of the general electorate remains a mystery to me.   

So, when Bill Stuntz, a distinguished scholar of criminal law issues at Harvard Law School, writes a wonderful pair of columns at Tech Central Station showing how the academic left and the Christian right can and should make common cause to address some vexing problems of domestic and international concern, I breathed a great sigh of relief and approbation.  You can find the more recent of Bill's columns here, including a link to the earlier column ("Faculty Clubs and Church Pews"). 

Let us fervently hope that some method of bridging this political gap so as to address these issues arises soon. 

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Interesting Op-Ed

Eric Posner, co-author with Jack Goldsmith of the forthcoming book, The Limits of International Law, has an interesting op-ed piece in today's New York Times.  The title is "All Justice Is Local, Too," and is available here. 

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Good Reading

David Brooks, the columnist for The New York Times, has published two wonderful lists of articles in what he calls the Hookie Awards.  These are essays or articles written on issues of public interest in the spirit of the great public intellectual Sidney Hook.  Brooks published two lists of winning articles -- one on December 25 (available here) and a second today (available here).  Both lists have links to the websites from which you can download the articles.  Enjoy! 

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