Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Wildfires in California. I've been surprised by how 'wacky' (for lack of a better word) have been some of the responses thereto. Of course I shouldn't be surprised. This is the country that elected Donald Trump president. I guess the notion of applying our usual political insanity to wildfires slipped under my radar and came up on me as a surprise. But one finds on twitter without much effort earnest attempts to explain that brush and tress aren't burning, that only houses are burning, because the fires are the consequence of a government plot. Also, one finds efforts to use the fires to make one of the key political points of the Trump coalition: beware illegal immigrants. There is no evidence any illegal immigrant had anything to do with any fire in California, or that there was arson involved with the largest of the fires in the state now, involving an arsonist of any nationality or legal status whatsoever.  Regardless, on twitter denizen “Cali-Conser...

The Supreme Court, earlier this term extended the time that would normally have been slated for arguments on the immigration case this term, US v. Texas. This Monday, it heard those arguments. Some background: the Obama administration has sought to implement a program it calls Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), effectively allowing people in the US illegally to remain here, work lawfully, and receive other benefits that would otherwise be withheld from them by law. One of the arguments against DAPA is that it violates APA. Also, that's the only argument that employs rhyming acronyms, so it is presumably the important one. APA is the Administrative Procedure Act, and it created notice and comment procedures for new administrative rules. Opponents of the Obama policy contend that DAPA is a new rule within the scope of APA, yet it was initiated without the proper notice-and-comment period, thus it is invalid. Apparently it is the Secretary of Homeland Securi...

To continue with the thoughts I was discussing last week under this heading: Under the  view I'm discussing, a variety of prescriptive legal theories have "worked themselves impure" in the words of Kessler and Pozen. These theories have begun as a purist account of how the law ought to work given one central idea. But they then have encountered difficult facts, contending interpretations, etc. and have gradually incorporated impurities, until it becomes clear that they weren't the revolution or New Paradigm they were first sold as. An example, cost-benefit analysis. In the incarnation that concerns the authors of this life-cycle view, CBA got a bold start in the early 1980s, but encountered difficulties before the end of that decade, in part because of an atmosphere of scandal that came to surround some of the administrative offices that had to take the point on this march. Also, on the academic front, CBA came under criticism for being a mere pretext for a po...

  Until quite recently, Robert Litan was a nonresident senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a bipartisan Washington think tank with a sterling reputation. The Institution’s website describes him thus: ”a widely recognized expert in regulation, antitrust, finance, among other policy subjects.” But he is no longer a fellow there, because he had the misfortune to disagree with Senator Elizabeth Warren. No Proper Risk Assessment The subject of the criticism, as it happens, was financial regulation, specifically new rules proposed by the Department of Labor (and supported by Senator Warren) that would impose fiduciary obligations on brokers and financial advisors who provide advice for IRAs.   A fiduciary obligation, of course, would be a big step up from the present level of obligation under SEC authority. The latter holds merely that those recommendations must be “suitable” for investors, judging suitability by income, ass...