Reflecting on the brouhaha over the future of American conservatism of late, I am reminded that while it seems evident to me and others on this site that a sizable chunk of conservatives’ problem is that the movement as a whole seems to be doubling down on ideas that have been dealt irreparable blows, there remains a sturdy and increasingly pervasive perception problem as well…

John Gardner (University of Oxford – Faculty of Law) has posted The Virtue of Justice and the Character of Law (Current Legal Problems, Vol. 53, No. 1) on SSRN.

Why should law be thought (by its defenders, by its critics, by itself, by the public, by anyone at all) to be the sort of thing which ought to be just? […]

Perhaps Randy “Macho Man” Savage didn’t have quite the acting career of some of his fellow ’80s wrestlers (see: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Sgt. Slaughter), but you can’t fault the man’s instinct for licensing only the hottest fashion. […]

Detroit News, March 16, 1931.

Offered to fight Stoetzer.
Followed Stoetzer into his house.
Refused to fight Stoetzer
Wiped his hands and face on Stoetzer’s coat.[…]

Over at Prawfs, Hillel Levin asks:My question is simple: how smart do you really have to be to be a good Supreme Court Justice?  And, as a follow-up, exactly what is it about Supreme Court judging that requires this level of brilliance? Of course, this question is both ambiguous and vague, because the crucial operative terms in the question are “good” and “smart.”  “Good” and “smart” are both vague, because there is no bright line that distinguishes a […]

But there was one thing I’d never experienced until Sunday night. I’d never seen my alma mater, Northwestern University, win a championship in anything . . . not as a student, nor as an alum.

For this reason, I propose that the California Supreme Court issue a supplemental ruling implementing a gay marriage cap and trade system. The total number of gay marriages in the state is capped at whatever number happened to exist presently. Once one of those marriages is dissolved, either through death or divorce, it opens up a new slot that can be auctioned off to help California’s budget crisis.

Frederick Schauer (University of Virginia School of Law) has posted Institutions and the Concept of Law: A Reply to Ronald Dworkin (with Some Help from Neil Maccormick) on SSRN. Ronald Dworkin has maintained, against me and others, that thinking about law ‘as a kind of social institution’ ‘has neither much practical nor philosophical interest.’ […]

A short century ago the US and Argentina were rivals. Both were riding the first wave of globalisation at the turn of the 20th century. Both were young, dynamic nations with fertile farmlands and confident exporters. Both brought the beef of the New World to the tables of their European colonial forebears. Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest economies in the world. The millions of emigrant ­Italians and […]

A little over 140 years ago the residents of the American south rose up and began brutally slaughtering thousands of their fellow citizens to defend a despicable system of slavery.  They chose to kill and destroy instead of recognizing that the tide of history had finally turned against them.  Yet the memory of these traitors and murderers is honored, the reasons for their crimes santized.

I was always sleepy while at work, and I think this exhaustion was because I felt trapped in a contradiction: the fast pace demanded complete focus on the task, yet that pace also made any real concentration impossible. I had to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author’s argument come into focus. This can only slow you down. To not […]

I suspect a lot of bloggers may be introverts, because blogging is great if you like to sit in front of the internet all day. If not for my aversion to specialising in one subject, I probably would have been an academic historian, because I think it would have suited me to work in libraries back before there was an internet.

This week, the Lexicon provides an introduction to virtue ethics.

(by Richard Florida) The economic crisis is hitting hardest at working class jobs, and rates of male unemployment have skyrocketed. A commonly asked question is how do we retrain them for emerging job opportunities in other sectors. The Globe and Mail`s Margaret Wente suggests the problem runs a whole lot deeper than we think. The new economy (over the long term) is creating tons of service jobs in retail, customer support, and personal care. The trouble is that […]

According to reports out of Kabul, the Taliban announced that they have waterboarded three U.S. soldiers taken prisoner. The Taliban commander asserted that waterboarding is not torture and does not violate the Geneva Convention or U.S. law. He assured everyone that a medical officer monitored all waterboarding sessions to insure that no permanent damage was done to the soldiers. In addition, he said they were careful to follow the directions on waterboarding […]