Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  I indicated in a late January post in this blog what I thought the Supreme Court was going to do about tariffs.  I said that it would likely affirm the decisions in the courts below striking down the tariffs, but that as to remedy it would find a way to allow the administration to avoid rebates.  I was right as to the questioning of the permissibility of the sweeping tariff powers the President sought to assign to himself here. I was wrong as to remedy.  As you surely all know by now, the Supreme Court by a 6-3 reading upheld one of the central pillars of our constitutional system, the unique role of the legislature in matters of taxation. And noted the obvious point that tariffs ARE taxation.  What did it say about remedy? Nothing, really. It left the matter open for further litigation, with the implication (I submit) that the importers who have been paying these charges since "Liberation Day" have a claim. The litigation is already underway. THAT I did not e...

Coke Roberts was a presence on America's television screens for more than forty years. One of her regular tasks was to comment intelligently on public affairs. She did this with analytical skill and civility without becoming a bullying blowhard and without chasing after shocks. Instead she focused on adding value. That isn't a bad legacy to leave. Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2002. She was treated at that time and, by all accounts, the treatment was successful. But cancer is a mean MF once it has its tentacles in you. It made an encore appearance this summer and she is said to have died to "complications" arising from that relapse.  Our class-act President chose to respond to her death with, "She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well." Of course it wasn't her job to treat the powerful "nicely." Another good legacy,

The two contending forces resolved their dispute arising out of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. It turns out the FBI didn't need Apple. The US government can hire hackers who can get into the phone. That was bad news for Apple's brand (unhackability is part of the mystique), but good news for what remains of the fourth amendment. It is an awful business having courts order private companies to help the government open doors to their products, especially when those products have an intimate character for so many of their buyers. Yet the FBI doesn't want that much to remain of the fourth amendment. So it, and the D of J, have re-started the fight, this time over another phone. The Justice Department said on April 8th that it is going to seek a court order to force Apple to help it unlock an iPhone that was seized as part of a New York drug-traffic investigation. This was a front page story in the weekend Wall Street Journal. Still, it faded from public attention q...

On November 7th, a US bankruptcy court judge, Steven Rhodes, approved Detroit's plan, allowing its exit from bankruptcy court protection. One of the remarkable subplots in Detroit's bankruptcy-court saga has been the availability of works of art as collateral. Rhodes' opinion described the Detroit Institute of Art as "an invaluable beacon of culture" and declared that the liquidate its assets, that is, to sell its artworks for the benefit of the creditors of the city, would be "to forfeit Detroit's future." I'm not sure I believe that. After all, the works themselves would have remained intact, surely? Unless we believe that the high bidder would be someone with a malicious design to destroy what he/she/it was buying. I think the reasonable guess is that the artworks involved would generally have ended up in the hands of other museums, or in a smattering of cases in the hands of wealthy collectors willing and in fact eager to take good c...