Scalia on 60 Minutes

Here's a nice summary of Scalia's position on constitutional interpretation. I'd recommend watching the video, though, as the interviewer does keep going after him, and Justice Ginsburg joins in as well.

"But what you're saying is, let's try to figure out the mindset of people back 200 years ago? Right?" Stahl asks.

"Well, it isn't the mindset. It's what did the words mean to the people who ratified the Bill of Rights or who ratified the Constitution," Scalia says.

"As opposed to what people today think it means," Stahl asks.

"As opposed to what people today would like," Scalia says.

"But you do admit that values change? We do adapt. We move," Stahl asks.

"That's fine. And so do laws change. Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That's how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn't change through a Constitution," Scalia argues.

He's right, you know, that society doesn't change through a constitution; change is left for spry junior senators from Illinois. Nonetheless, some values may not change, and they may need to be protected for democracy to be democracy...



Nonetheless, it's hard not to respect his argument and his entertaining fervor:

"I can be charming and combative at the same time," Scalia replies. "What’s contradictory between the two? I love to argue. I've always loved to argue. And I love to point out the weaknesses of the opposing arguments. It may well be that I'm something of a shin kicker. It may well be that I'm something of a contrarian."

Transcript linked here.

Obama, Sunstein and Libertarian Paternalism

First off, I dedicate this blog posting to Abhi who ran into me this weekend and scolded me for not reading this blog.

In a story that encompasses all parts of our PPE major, Salon Magazine examines "libertarian paternalism," a movement started by Cass Sunstein, and its connection to Barack Obama and his economic advisors.

Thaler and Sunstein describe a style of government in which citizens are free to choose -- how they invest their money, how they give away their money -- but the options among which they can select from are structured so as to steer them in the socially correct direction. Designing those options, they write, is a process known as "choice architecture." Government, they argue, needs to do a better job picking choices.

By now readers are probably wondering how Barack Obama fits into all this. Easy -- Obama's chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is a paradigmatic choice architect. Thaler exerts considerable influence on Goolsbee's views.

What's everyone's thoughts on this? I personally wish Sunstein would have chosen a better phrase than "libertarian paternalism."

Link: Is Barack Obama a Libetarian Paternalist? [Salon]

Berkeley takes a cue from Stiglitz

Stiglitz asserts that a more effective regime to foster innovation would be government prize funds. I agree that prize funds would be a great incentive for researchers to find the "big" discoveries. Yet, like many others (Epstein) I believe that the big problem in R&D is high initial costs of production. If the government had a guaranteed fund to cover the high initial costs of drug research, the government could then work with the drug companies to offer medicines at cost to developing countries and slightly above to developed countries. The drug companies would not be able to price gouge because the high initial costs would have been reduced to zero. Also, the fund could have conditions (half or no payments for minor improvements in existing research) to ensure that companies actually produce worthwhile drugs rather than rehashes of old ones. However, it appears that Stiglitz is right. Prize funds are probably better at stimulating researchers and innovators than excessively strong IP laws or guaranteed funds. The University of California-Berkeley seems to be taking his message to heart. Over $100,000 in award prizes were given to students. Take a look for yourself.

Useful Rules

Any of these sound familiar from seminar or tutorial...

Marx and Obama

William Kristol shows Marx some love and Obama, as usual, none whatsoever in a recent NY Times article. Of course, I disagree with a lot of it, but the top is what's relevant:

I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves....

Hurley helped us prove that wrong, but I suppose I can (gasp) agree with Kristol on this:

Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: “Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes.”

Now, this is a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree prior to Marx, and many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century. I don’t believe the claim is true, but it’s certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.

Certainly.

A Pretty Tax?

Is this sufficiently Rawlsian?

Gonzalo Otalora has written a book entitled ¡Feo! (Ugly!), which calls for the taxation of good-looking people to counteract the natural advantages they have over munters. "Countless studies show that ... it's easier for them to find jobs; they're paid more and find partners more easily," he says. The "manifiesto del feosexual" also calls for the levy to be donated to the ugly, and for photo requirements on job applications and airbrushing in magazines to be outlawed.

The Claremont Journal of PPE? You wouldn't do it.

This may make me a nerd, but from time to time, I check the website of UPenn’s PPE program. It has a solid rubric for charting out PPE coursework, which I find to be particularly useful during class registration. While snooping around today, I found out that the Penn program produces a PPE journal once a semester. Its form mirrors other academic review journals. Therefore, it not as sexy as it could be; however, I think it is an interesting idea. Given the stellar make-up of our PPE program, I think we could produce a better journal and a better title (SPICE: A Student Perspective of Institutions, Choice, and Ethics). Let me know what you think.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/ppe/Students/SPICE-spring2007.pdf

Deconstruction and Progress

Stanley Fish, French Theory in America

I shared this with Hurley earlier with the questions below (copied-pasted). I suppose it's worthwhile to incorporate more people in the discussion.

I'm unfamiliar with Bacon and Derrida, but the article above got me interested. Mostly, I'm left unnerved. Here's the worrisome section:

Obviously the rationalist Enlightenment agenda does not survive this deconstructive analysis intact, which doesn't mean that it must be discarded (the claim to be able to discard it from a position superior to it merely replicates it) or that it doesn't yield results (I am writing on one of them); only that the progressive program it is thought to underwrite and implement — the program of drawing closer and closer to a truth independent of our discursive practices, a truth that, if we are slow and patient in the Baconian manner, will reveal itself and come out from behind the representational curtain — is not, according to this way of thinking, realizable.

Fish's argument seems to call into question progressivism, at least my understanding of it: what can man progress to, if not truth? I had presumed the rational inquiry to be an adequate guide in political (and philosophical) life, but it seems now decapitated by the deconstructionists. Also, does this limit the possibility of a quiet truth--that is, a truth that we can approximate and even reach, but not know? Odd, then: faith would buttress and validate the rationalist agenda. Or is the solution less clean: tangible progress needs no independent grounding, it is empirical. We are free to determine our own metric (be it lives saved, jobs created, etc) to measure political progress. This seems at once commonsensical and hollow.

Am I reading this completely wrong?

Welcome Importance

Given our ideological and intellectual differences, I find solace in our one commonality: self-importance. Just as each vice has its habitat--drinking, TNC; moral flexibility, your summer internship--blogs, as you all must know, now house, encourage, and indulge importance. Please, don't try to control yourselves.

Please post interesting news articles, thoughts on the readings, or, if you must, your résumé.

Cheers,
Abhi