The Faculty Lounge

Once-proud giants, now wards of the state whose leaders’ compensation is being set by a Washington paymaster

From the NY Times.

Yesterday’s NY Times Room For Debate commentary addressed Kenneth R. Feinberg’s pay plan, which calls for significant pay cuts (50 percent on average) from the 25 top earners at seven companies that received exceptional bailout help — Citigroup, Bank of America, American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers.  In addition to reducing payment amounts, the plan alters the form of the pay in an attempt to better-align incentives with long-term financial health, for example, by shifting some cash compensation to restricted stock that cannot be sold for several years.

It’s unlikely, though, that the plan will successfully dampen popular outrage over high Wall Street bonuses at bailed-out institutions. The pay restrictions do not apply to firms that have already repaid their loans, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, which received tens of billions of dollars in government loans and loan guarantees and are expected to make large bonus payments this year.  Goldman Sachs raised particular ire, when it reported record profits and bonuses (a pool of nearly $23 billion, the highest ever).

The cuts will hit some firms harder than others.  At AIG financial products division, for example, no top executive will receive more than $200,000 in total compensation.

As to banks not recipients of bailout money, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday that it would crack down on pay packages that encouraged bankers to take excessive risks. The proposal “will subject executives, traders, deal makers and other employees of the biggest banks to regulatory scrutiny of their compensation.”

Instead of pay limits, the Fed rules are intended to tailor compensation packages to deter risky practices and reward long-term performance.  “The Fed’s plan, which will take effect some time after a 30-day comment period, will create a two-tier system of supervising pay, using different approaches for the nation’s 28 biggest institutions and the thousands of smaller banks, which would be subjected to a review with their regular bank examinations.”

According to Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, “Compensation practices at some banking organizations have led to misaligned incentives and excessive risk-taking, contributing to bank losses and financial instability.” . . . “The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that compensation packages appropriately tie rewards to longer-term performance and do not create undue risk for the firm or the financial system.”

The Room For Debate contributors are:

                                    Lynn A. Stout, law and economics professor, U.C.L.A.

                                    Tyler Cowen, economist, George Mason University

                                    John C. Coffee Jr., professor at Columbia Law School

                                    Yves Smith, financial analyst

         Nicole Gelinas, Manhattan Institute

In a recent paper, I address the incentives (including, but not limited to, financial incentives) for risk taking within financial institutions at levels that are not socially optimal and pose dangers to the financial system.   Although I particularly address the role of traders, sales people, and their direct supervisors in risk-taking behavior, some of the discussion is relevant for executives as well. 

Sadly, I fear that the path to sound and strong financial institutions will not be paved solely with compensation reform.  Aligning payment incentives with shareholders’ interests has proved difficult enough over the years, without also having to account for the systemic well being of the financial system.  Executive pay reform is likely to be little more than a band-aid, when real systemic reform is what’s needed. 

As Martin Wolf recently noted in the FT:

A year ago, at the height of the financial panic, the world yearned for a profitable and confident financial sector. It now has what it wants, but hates it. As joblessness soars and the hopes of hundreds of millions of people are blighted, the financial sector’s survivors are thriving. Even bonuses are back. Policymakers have made a Faustian bargain.

Wolf continues by noting that trying to make financial systems safer has made them more perilous. Today, the market is more concentrated, many institutions have become too big or systemically important to fail, and such institutions with an implicit bailout cushion cannot be expected to prudently manage risk.  As a result, according to Wolf, neither market discipline nor regulation is effective.

There is a danger, therefore, that this rescue will lead to still greater risk-taking and an even worse crisis at some point in the not too distant future.

Either we impose a credible threat of bankruptcy, or institutions we have to support are made safer, or, better, we have both of these. Open-ended insurance of weakly regulated institutions that take complex gambles is intolerable. We dare not return to business as usual. It is as simple – and brutal – as that.

Prior related posts:

Supersize Me: Too Big To Fail, and Getting Bigger
Becker And Posner On The Pay Czar
What Does Goldman’s VaR Mean?

Bank failure posts:

Failures, Funds, and the FDIC

Bank Failures and FDIC Fund Losses

Bank Failures Update and Future Problem Banks


Bank Failures in Historical Perspective

The Power 30

The November issue of SmartMoney Magazine profiles the "power 30," a list of powerful and influential movers and shakers.  The list breaks down into five categories:   government, finance and Wall Street, real estate, industry, and health and medicine.  Making the "government" list is Harvard law prof Elizabeth Warren (pictured), in her capacity as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (see our previous related posts here and here).  Her profile suggests that some of her proposals "have drawn fire from almost anyone with an interest in maintaining the status quo."  Warren's response?

"I'm not an insider, and I don't need another job," she says, a not-so-thinly veiled shot at what she sees as the revolving door between public office and private industry.  "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to raise the issues that I think are important, regardless of who wants to ignore them."

The full list is available here.

Who Knew?

Nobel-Prize-winning, Heisenberg's-and-Einstein's-elbows-rubbing, matrix-mechanics-developing physicist Max Born's granddaughter is Olivia Newton-John. 

Maybe when she told us of Xanadu, that "everlasting world" where "a million ... lights ...  danc[e]," "dream[s] ... c[o]me through a million years," and  people appear as "shooting stars," she knew whereof she sang.

An Old-Fashioned North Carolina Halloween Celebration

At the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C.  Featuring barbecued chicken, fried chicken, and “all the sides,” plus a burning of satanic music and books, which includes bibles that aren’t the King James Version.

Story from: kwtx, stltoday.com, myfoxdc.com

HT: Tyler Cowen

Image source

New York Suit Seeks To Block Payments For Oocytes Used In Stem Cell Research

Feminists Choosing Life of New York (FCLNY) has filed suit in New York State Supreme Court to block the use of taxpayer funds to pay women recruited to donate their eggs for embryonic stem cell research.   The complaint, filed in Feminists Choosing Life of New York v. Empire State Stem Cell Board (available here, opens pdf), seeks:

an Order declaring that the creation of the ESSCB and the manner in which its members are appointed is in violation of the New York State Constitution and separation of powers doctrine, invalidating the June 11, 2009 Resolution and/or otherwise enjoining Respondents from making grants or otherwise authorizing spending for research on stem cell lines derived from using female human eggs where the donor was, or will be, compensated with state funds. 

According to FCLNY Executive Director, Wendy McVeigh: “New York State has the responsibility to protect women.  Instead, the state is using taxpayers’ dollars to entice young, economically vulnerable women to experiment in this medically risky procedure.”

The suit is almost certainly motivated more by FCLNY’s pro-life agenda than by a concern for the vulnerability of egg donors, which, in any event, is a sorely misguided, if commonly invoked, anxiety.  Moreover, the complaint highlights the extent to which sentiments that the state must “protect women” from coercive economic bargains are co-opted by groups with other political goals -- in this case, embryo protection.  (This is a topic I discussed more generally last week at the North Carolina Law Review’s Globalization, Families, and the State Symposium)

As I argued in this post shortly after the New York law took effect this summer, payment has long been provided for eggs to be used in fertility treatments, and the FCLNY suit, even if successful, would have no impact on the active market for oocytes used in fertility treatments.  See here for a detailed discussion of that market, and a critique of the coercion rationale against paying egg donors.   Also see this 2006 LA Times op-ed piece by Judith Daar & Russell Korobkin, making a similar argument in connection with California’s law.

(HT: Egg Donation & Surrogacy Law Blog)

Morehouse College: Not so Fabulous?

Morehouse College (which, as most readers will know, is a private historically black liberal arts college for men) is in the news for its ban on “the wearing of women's clothes, makeup, high heels and purses as part of a new crackdown on what the institution calls inappropriate attire.”  CNN story here:

The dress-wearing ban is aimed at a small part of the private college's 2,700-member student body, said Dr. William Bynum, vice president for Student Services.

"We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men," he said.

Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh has a funny take on why he thinks the ban will be ineffective, which begins by noting that “For as long as men and women have been wearing clothes, men have been finding excuses to dress up like women,” and concludes that “Morehouse is a private school, and it goes without saying that there are countless other colleges for men with a real commitment to fabulousness.”  

Mid-week Links

Posh Law Prof Pads, via Above The Law, including an $8.45 million Manhattan pied-à-terre recently purchased by Daniel Fischel, former dean of the University of Chicago Law School.  The others, as you might expect, are at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Columbia.  Highest priced law prof pad listed?  $30 million.  Yep, you read it right, $30 million.  

Relatedly, for those who missed it in late August, the Boston Globe ran this story about the “new owner of the grand Victorian home on Irving Street in Cambridge where Julia Child, the doyenne of la cuisine bourgeoise, lived, cooked, and warbled for 43 years” – Harvard law professor Michael Klarman and his family.

Via Brian Leiter, William Sage (University of Texas at Austin) and Susan Wolf (Minnesota) have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Eric Posner and Henry Farrell discuss Eric’s new book on bloggingheads.

Mike Dorf, Spork Puts New Twist on Old Rules/Standards Question

The Superfreakonomics controversy continues (See the first round in Weekend Links):

            Dubner: The Anatomy of a Smear

            Brad DeLong’s Last Post on SuperFreakonomics

            Via Brad DeLong, Four Defenenders of SuperFreakonomics (Bryan Caplan, Tim Harford, Joshua Gans, and Robert Waldmann)

Via Greg Mankiw, some reactions from Yoram Bauman (the Stand-up Economist – see video below) here and here, and an exchange with Levitt.

Above The Law reports that Stanford Law is moving to a quarter system, and Steve Bainbridge suspects that quarters are in his future as well.

Via The Blog of Legal Times, Judge Gives OK to Examine GMU Professor's Job Record in Harassment Case

Paul Horwitz and Jack Chin with advice for aspiring law profs on Choosing Among “Lower-Tier” Schools.

Instapundit: “Is the Blogosphere Superior to the Twitterverse? They’re just different, okay? — and there are enough electrons and pixels to go around.”

Monday's Medical Marijuana Memo

Via WSJ Law Blog, on Monday Deputy Attorney General David Ogden released a memo affirming the Obama administration’s policy on medical marijuana disclosed earlier this year.  The memo states that:

For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources. On the other hand, prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. To be sure, claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of those laws, and federal law enforcement should not be deterred by such assertions when otherwise pursuing the Department's core enforcement priorities.

As I discussed over the weekend, the policy still leaves large numbers of dispensaries, particularly in California, in a state of uncertainty, as they are not clearly in compliance with state laws. 

The Polymath on BBC

In a two-part series two weeks ago (The Disappearing Academic Fox? Parts I and II), I discussed Edward Carr’s article in the Autumn edition of Intelligent Life, The Last Days Of The Polymath, drawing lessons and questions about its implications for the legal academy.  On October 12, Carr appeared on the BBC to discuss the article. (starts around 12:20)

The Intelligent Life blog also put together a list of twenty living polymaths.  A few aspects of the list that probably will not surprise: it is “overwhelmingly male, mostly Anglophone and all over the age of 45.”  One thing that will surprise readers, I think:  George Foreman made the list!  Yes, he of boxing, grills, and five sons, all also named George Foreman.

(HT: Paul Kedrosky)

IVF And The Cost of Multiples

Last week, the New York Times focused on the issue of multiple births from fertility treatments, including IVF and intrauterine insemination.  Stephanie Saul begins with a two part series, here and here, which is followed by a Room for Debate discussion.  Several of the Room for Debate contributors raise interesting points, many of which I address in the recently-published Why We Should Ignore The “Octomom.”

In Octomom, for example, I argue that -- though sad and disturbing -- the Suleman octuplets case is a rare event, and the attention and controversy that followed in its wake distracted from the more pressing public health concern – rising twin rates.  CDC data suggest that the far higher incidence of twins as a percentage of live ART births, rather than the lower incidence of higher-order multiples, is both the most logical source for public concern and the multiple-birth rate most amenable to reduction through increased attention to embryo transfer practices. 

Mark I. Evans, president of the Fetal Medicine Foundation of America and the director of Comprehensive Genetics in New York, echoes this sentiment in his Room for Debate contribution:

The “octomom” may have gotten much of the media attention on multiple births this year, but the more mundane epidemic of twins actually costs the American health care system and affects the lives of families far more.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the Room for Debate discussants (many of whom are fertility specialists) resist embryo transfer regulation as a means to address rising multiple birth rates from IVF, advocating instead patient and doctor education and responsible industry self-regulation.  Although I’m generally skeptical of self-regulation as an effective means to address public concerns, in this case I agree with the industry that the benefits of embryo transfer regulation in the United States are unlikely to outweigh the costs.

As I elaborate in Octomom, the U.S. fertility industry is making progress in reducing multiple births from ARTs while maintaining pregnancy success rates, and is likely to continue to do so.  This ability, however, depends on a variety of factors, including the patient’s age and the underlying cause of infertility, the ability to fund multiple ART cycles, individual clinical expertise and conditions, embryo quality, and cryopreservation techniques.  Particularly in the U.S. system of private (or private insurance) payment for ARTs, under which some customers cannot afford multiple IVF cycles, mandatory policies risk reductions in pregnancy success rates that some customers will find unacceptable.  It is thus no coincidence that the countries experiencing the greatest success with strict embryo transfer limits are those with both a well-developed and technically advanced fertility practice, and broad public funding of multiple IVF cycles.

Admittedly, there is more room for improvement in ART twin rates.  But the U.S. lacks the political will for the strict embryo transfer limits—or, even less likely, the aggressive selective fetal reduction—that have reduced the rate of twin births from ARTs in some countries.  As I elaborate in the “octomom” article, this reflects both some sound policy judgments and some political realities.

Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, favors limiting the number of embryos transferred in infertility treatments, yet concludes that:

there is no chance that the practice of embryo transfer will ever be regulated by legislation in the United States. In a nation still deeply divided over abortion and the moral status of embryos, politicians have little interest and no stomach for opening up a public debate on any aspect of infertility treatments.

I conclude with a similar point in “Octomom”: 

In a perfect world, there may be a regulatory model that maximizes public welfare by appropriately balancing this interest [concerns re: multiple birth rates] against parental desires and the differing medical needs of fertility patients.   We do not live in that perfect world.  In addition to the usual regulatory problems of institutional competence, bureaucratic red tape, and political capture, questions of embryo transfer and multiple pregnancies in many countries, including the United States, inevitably intersect with other politically contentious issues, including the moral and legal status of embryos and abortion.  . . .

Because the solutions to multiple pregnancies from IVF that are most likely to preserve pregnancy success rates include selective fetal reduction, the creation of many embryos from which only the highest quality are transferred, and cryopreservation of excess embryos for possible future cycles, advocates of embryo-transfer limits must recognize that embryo-protection goals are not only distinct from, but are often incompatible with, multiple-birth reduction goals. . . . The political minefields of abortion and embryo rights thus render it highly unlikely that the United States will implement comprehensive embryo transfer regulation effectively designed to reduce multiple births anytime soon.

Moon Law

The latest on Moon Law, "A Legal Regime for the Mining of Helium-3 on the Moon: U.S. Policy Options," from Richard Bilder at Wisconsin.

Digital Copyright Law: What Authors Want ...

cross posted from madisonian.net

With the second movie in the Twilight series (New Moon) imminently about to appear on the big screen, I found myself getting interested in this pop culture phenomenon, particularly as I strolled around a bookstore this afternoon and found just about every magazine cover devoted to the exploits of the teenage vampires and werewolves in the small town of Forks.

One part of the Twilight story, or at least the story of its author Stephenie Meyer, provides an interesting commentary on copyright law in the digital age.  The original Twilight novel is told from the perspective of its young heroine, Bella Swan, as are the next three novels in the series.  Bella famously falls for a young vampire called Edward and their forbidden and dangerous love is the focus of the narrative.  However, at some point during the writing process, the author became interested in how the story might look if she told it from Edward’s point of view.  She thus started a project entitled Midnight Sun – a retelling of the first book from the vampire’s perspective.

As she was working on Midnight Sun, production was on full swing on the first of the movies.  She released some draft chapters of the book to members of the production team (and possibly other people as well) to assist with character development on the Twilight movie.  Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with any work now made available in a digital format, the uncompleted draft of Midnight Sun was eventually released virally over the Internet.

Ms Meyer’s reaction to the unauthorized release and the storm of online commentary that followed is very instructive for those interested in finding out what many authors really want from digital copyright law.  And, perhaps surprisingly for some, it isn’t all about the money.  Ms Meyer’s response to the unauthorized release is described on her website.  And out of deference to her concerns about loss of control of her own material online, I won’t cut and paste slabs of her comments here.

What is interesting about her reaction, though, is she seems more concerned about loss of control of the fruits of her artistic labors, and feels that the unauthorized posting was an intrusion into her creative process that has so significantly interfered with her process that she may now be unable to finish the book.  While she would undoubtedly have made lots of money out of completing and publishing the book, this is likely a secondary concern given how financially successful she has been with the first four books, a new book series she has started, and the films of the books.  So are we seeing a significant divide here in practice between a successful author’s interests and potentially the commercial interests of her publishers?  While publishers would presumably be more concerned with money, the author here is more concerned with artistic integrity.  Does this suggest we need to more closely revisit the question of moral rights in the United States?  Might we have lost track of what authors are really concerned about?

It’s also interesting that this is effectively a case of a derivative work created by the author herself.  What would happen if fans disappointed at Ms Meyer’s decision to put the book on hold decide to create their own derivative works, telling the story from Edward’s (and perhaps other character’s) perspectives?  How would this fare under copyright law?  (And think of fair use factor 4 – would the fans be infringing into a potential market of the author if, say, she decided that she would NEVER complete the works, and if the fans did not themselves make any profits from making up the derivative storylines.)

Annette Gordon-Reed, Houstonian

The Houston Chronicle has a very nice story on native daughter Annette Gordon-Reed, who won the Pulitzer Prize in history and the National Book Award in non-fiction for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.  From the Chronicle article:

As a child in East Texas, [Gordon-Reed] was caught up in the country's conflicted stance on segregation.

In the early 1960s, her school district operated under “freedom of choice,” a system that let families pick which schools their children attended. As a result, many schools remained segregated, despite the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that struck down the laws supporting this.

Gordon-Reed's parents, suspecting “freedom of choice” wouldn't last, sent their daughter to the “white” school in 1963. Her mother, an English teacher, taught in a “black” school nearby.

“Growing up in the end of the '60s, early '70s, I never thought much about studying race,” Gordon-Reed said. “But it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be a part of what I was reading about or writing about. It was always there. If you grow up in a place where race matters, that weight is on you, on your mind.”

Previous lounge coverage of this year's Pulitzer prizes is here.

Thanks to Tim Zinnecker for pointing me to this charming story.

United States of America v. 1st Lt. Ehren Watada

Late in September, the very interesting case of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada quietly went away.  Watada was the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq (early in 2006) on the strength of his convictions that the war was fraudulently launched and illegal, and that he would be committing war crimes if he were to follow orders.

The military charged Watada with two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for public statements critical of the Iraq war and a count of missing movement for refusing to deploy.  Trial of the charges ended in a prosecution-requested mistrial in 2007.  The military's efforts to retry Watada failed on Double Jeopardy grounds.  The Bush Justice Department took steps toward readying an appeal, but Solicitor General Elena Kagan decided not to pursue the matter earlier this year.

You can see Watada explaining some of the reasons for his actions in the clip available on the blog of the very wonderful Densho Project, an extraordinary online resource about the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II.

Watada's case invites thought about the role of individual conscience in military judgments and the compass of permissible public comment by uniformed soldiers during a war.

Some observers, noting Watada's Japanese ancestry, also saw connections between Watada's resistance and the refusal of hundreds of incarcerated Japanese Americans to comply with the military draft in 1944.  Here is an interesting video of a conversation between Watada and a few of that earlier generation of Japanese American protesters.

The WWII-era resisters are the subject of my 2001 book "Free to Die for their Country:  The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II."  I myself see some important distinctions between Watada's protest and that of the incarcerated Japanese Americans in WWII.   Among other things, the WWII resisters were civilians refusing the draft and not officers refusing orders; whatever one thinks of the merits of the grounds of Watada's and the WWII resisters' protests, it must be the case that an officer's freedom to refuse a government order is narrower than a civilian's.  More importantly, the WWII resisters were not protesting the lawfulness or morality of the war against Japan; they maintained that the government, having stripped them of all of citizenship's benefits and privileges on the basis of their ancestry, lost the power to impose on them citizenship's greatest burden.

The Watada case ends with a whimper ... but there is much to think about here.

Harpers Ferry Monument to Hayward Shepard

We've just passed the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (it was October 16, 1859), so it's time for a post on Harpers Ferry....

Back in the 1930s the United Daughters of the Confederacy put up a monument dedicated to Hayward Shepard, an African American man who was killed at Harpers Ferry. He was the first person killed in John Brown’s raid. The monument reads 

On the night of October 16, 1859, Heyward Shepard, an industrious and respected colored freeman was mortally wounded by John Brown’s raiders in pursuance of his duties as an employee of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.  He became the first victim of the attempted insurrection. This boulder is erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a memorial to Heyward Shepherd, exemplifying the character and faithfulness of thousands of negroes who, under many temptations through subsequent years of war, so conducted themselves that no stain was left upon a record which is the peculiar heritage of the American people, and an everlasting tribute to the best on both races. 

When I visited Harpers Ferry back in 2005 with a few friends -- all "normal" people, not Civil War memory nuts like me -- they puzzled about the meaning of that monument.  Why did the UDC put this up--and what does it mean? The idea was that if they could show that slaves and free blacks wouldn’t join Brown’s rebellion that slavery wasn’t so bad.  If free blacks wouldn’t join, it would show that they were on the side of the slaveholders rather than the violent abolitionists.  This, of course, was controversial.  The NAACP protested against the monument, because it suggested that the slaves accepted their lot and benefited, perhaps even liked, slavery. Of course, while some saw John Brown as the devil, an abolitionist nut who fomented Civil War, others saw him as a hero. W.E.B. DuBois proposed a counter-monument to the Heyward Shepard monument in 1932, which would read:

Here / John Brown / Aimed at human slavery / A Blow / That woke a guilty nation. / With him fought / Seven slaves and sons of slaves. / And 4,000,000 freemen / Singing / “John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grace / But his Soul goes marching on!” / In gratitude this Tablet is erected / The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People / May 21, 1932. 

Still, the town put up the monument.  It remained on display until 1976 when, during renovations, it was removed. You know what? It’s back up again, though this time with a plaque that helps put it into context. I think that’s the best possible result: let visitors to Harper’s Ferry know that these sentiments existed and that they were part of an attempt to re-write the history of slavery. Unfortunately, that attempt was pretty successful. 

If you’re interested in learning more about this, you might enjoy a book by Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel called The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: A Devil, Two Rivers, and a Dream. I wrote a review of a couple years back for H-Net, which is available here.  And the Library of Congress has an early version of the John Brown Song (later remade into the Battle Hymn of the Republic) here.

An Animal Lesson for JoP Keith Bardwell in Louisiana

Another video clip for the weekend:

Earlier this week, Kathleen Bergin blogged about the justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple in Tangipahoa Parish. Post here.

As a scholar interested in nontraditional families, I am always drawn to relationships that seem odd to others, but perfectly sensible to the parties involved. Even from the animal kingdom.  At the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, an unlikely couple defies the meaning of "normal."

Pot Critic Wanted (Just To Make A Reefer-Threefer For The Weekend)

Just to make it an even three in terms of pot posts for the weekend (see here and here), via Hit & Run, and according to the New York Times, Westword, a Denver alt-weekly, is looking for a marijuana critic; perhaps the nation’s first.  Rather than review the product itself, the idea is to assess the quality of the growing number of dispensaries now in Denver.

“We want to see what kind of place it is, how well they care for you and also how sketchy the place is,” said Patricia Calhoun, editor of Westword. “Do they actually look at your medical marijuana card? Do they let you slip some cash under the counter and bypass the rules?”

Last week, the paper published a call for a regular freelance reviewer with a real, doctor-certified medical need -- asking each candidate to send a résumé and an essay on “What Marijuana Means to Me” -- and received several dozen applications within a few days.

Browse Reason's complete archive of articles on medical marijuana here.  I promise, no more pot posts (this weekend).

Weekend Links

The recent David Letterman scandal is renewing interest in the old (but still interesting) question of why blackmail is illegal. Lizzie Widdicombe takes up the case in The New Yorker, interviewing law professors, economists, and other theorists.

Is the Use of Blackface in French Vogue Offensive? (XX)

How economist Richard Rahn recently had a segment on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer canceled, not because he had the wrong point of view, but because the show found another economist prepared to make his points on John Maynard Keynes in the form of rap. (HT: Andrew Sullivan)

Paul Caron picks apart the Princeton Review rankings in a series of posts.

From the FT, Asia’s richest man takes 66% pay cut: “Mukesh Ambani who is spending about $1bn to build a lavish 27-storey house and buy his wife a luxury Airbus jet, this week gave himself a 66 per cent pay cut ‘to set an example of moderation.’”

Also from the FT, Bonus hopes lift top properties: “City bankers confident of bumper bonuses this year have descended on London estate agents hoping to snap up multimillion-pound homes, with Goldman Sachs employees among those leading the charge.”

Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson respond to criticism by Barbara Ehrenreich in the LA Times of their “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”

Reviews of SuperFreakonomics are trickling out now.  Here’s a roundup of review links from Freakonomics.  Ezra Klein is much more negative, and Brad DeLong is annoyed at the publisher, because he has to rely on second-hand reviews, rather than the book itself.  See this exchange between Dubner and DeLong.

The climate change chapter is generating particular controversy.  See, for example, here and here.

            Levitt responds here.

Brian Leiter on "Regional" Law Schools With an Unusually Good Eye for Faculty Talent

Rock star professors

And none From the Law School?  I’m shocked.

The Harvard Crimson profiles “Three Rock Star Professors” -- Niall Ferguson, N. Gregory Mankiw, and Robert A. Lue:

They are the celebrity professor, the rock star professor, the professor whose book you’ve read before your family lugs your worldly possessions through Johnston Gate. They may lecture in the same auditoriums as other academics, but they inspire a far different scope of admiration. This is what it’s like.

Juror Threatened With Fork?

Story here.