Category: Posts by Mark D. White
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Mark D. White Yesterday, Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned Proposition 8, the voter-enacted amendment to the California Constitution that declares marriage to be exclusively between a man and a woman. This case will undoubtedly move up through the court system, but for now this is undeniably a huge step. I especially appreciated this passage in Judge…
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Mark D. White I haev a new post at Psychology Today reviewing a fantastic new book chapter titled "Tunnel Vision" by University of Wisconsin Law School professor Keith A. Findley, also the co-director of the Wisconsin innocence Project and president of the Innocence Network. The chapter is forthcoming in the book, Conviction of the Innocent:…
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Mark D. White While searching for readings for my legal philosophy class (now focusing on constitutional interpretation in light of the pending Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process), I lit upon this fantastic symposium on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Ohio State Law Journal, in particular the article by Tobias Barrington Wolff entitled "Ruth Bader…
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Mark D. White You beat me to it, Jonathan–I was going to wait until the president signed the bill, but since you said your piece, I will too. Universal health care coverage is a laudable goal–or, to be precise, universal access to coverage is laudable, since health care insurance should always be voluntary, with individuals…
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Mark D. White The idea for this post (as well as the title) comes from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, who writes: Chris, a loyal MR reader, asks: I'd like to see you list the top 10 books which have influenced your view of the world. I'll go with the "gut list," rather than the…
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Mark D. White I don't know how I missed this article, but thanks to the great folks at Coordination Problem and Cafe Hayek, I saw it, and it confirms so much of what I tell my students, especially in macro, as well as my intuitions regarding the proper role of economics. The piece is Russ Robert's "Is the Dismal…
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Mark D. White You win some, you lose some. My most recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, in response to Ralph Nader and Ralph Weissman's February 11 article against the Citizens United decision, "The Case Against Corporate Speech," went unpublished (the published letters are here). For what it's worth, here's what I wrote: I…
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Mark D. White Really two separate topics here, both inspired by recent articles in the Wall Street Journal regarding the issue of gays in the U.S. armed forces. 1. The Journal is printing one of my recent letters to the editor tomorrow (Thursday, February 11) under the heading "All Society Could Use Some Military Virtues": In Bret Stephens's…
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Mark D. White Thanks to Orly Lobel at Prawfsblawg for pointing out this New York Times Magazine piece on new ideas. The one he points out in particular involves "ethical robots" (scroll down in the piece a few items), which will be programmed with basic ethical tenets and will perform more reliably (according to this programming) on…
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Mark D. White Apparently, according to a recent AP article by Carla K. Johnson, present in both the House and Senate health care reform bills is a program in which workers at participating companies would be automatically enrolled – critics say "tricked into" enrolling – unless they opted out. People would see a deduction for…
Mark D. White 