The Faculty Lounge

The State And The Market

I spent yesterday at a really fun roundtable on the State and the Market at Bar Ilan University. The roundtable, organized by Tsilly Dagan and me (well, really just Tsilly, who did all the work) featured several paper panels and discussion on issues that will interest Lounge readers interested in Taboo Trades.  Yuval Feldman presented an interesting paper (as always) about an MTurk study of subtle conflicts of interest – when “good people do bad things,” and Hila Shamir presented some early-stage research on how the state can support women in the workplace, in particular, working mothers.

I’m, of course, partial to my own panel, which featured Benny Shmueli’s paper on the alienability of the get (the Jewish divorce bill) and Ram Rivlin’s analysis of why we perceive certain transactions as taboo when the trading is among strangers, yet accept similar intra-familial transfers as uncontroversial.  I discussed commodification in the oocyte market – specifically, two cases of first impression in the United States (one an antitrust suit against the American Society For Reproductive Medicine and the other a tax case regarding the proper treatment of income earned from egg “donation.”) 

But the stars of the show were undoubtedly Tsilly Dagan and Talia Fisher, whose paper on the fragmentation and tradability of sovereignty makes even the proposal by my colleagues Joseph Blocher and Mitu Gulati (on the same panel) to marketize sovereign control look tame in comparison. 

It was also nice to see other Bar Ilan faculty in attendance, many of whom I met when I visited a few years ago, such as Shahar Lifshitz, Adi Ayal, and Jacob Nussim and, of course, to meet the new faculty who have been hired since I was there last.   

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We are happy to invite you for a roundtable on “The State and the Market” to be held December 30^th 2014 at Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law (room # 300 @ the Banin building). 

Please find below a short description of the focus of our discussions as well as our schedule 

Tsilly Dagan & Kimberly D. Krawiec  

The State and The Market

The intersection of the state and the market is the center of attention of many theoretical perspectives and disciplines.  The ways in which states design their markets and set their borders has a major effect on the nature of society, and the identities of individuals within it. At the same time markets (in goods, in services, investments as well as the market-like competition between states under globalization) alter states’ policies and capabilities and curtail their sovereign powers.

In this workshop, we wish to encourage participants to present their work in progress focusing on the description, explanation, and the normative evaluation of the mutual effects of states and markets: the cases where the two institutions limit one another and the cases where they facilitate each other’s prosperity.

‫ 

16:30- 17:30           When State and Market Interact

 

Yuval Feldman & Eliran Haleli , “Exploring the Potential Role of Law in Enhancing Neutrality in Subtle Conflicts of Interest Situations‫.”

Hila Shamir, “Designing Legal Mechanisms for the Promotion of Women: the Market, The State, The Family and the Public Good”

 

17:45-19:15            Taboo Trades

 

Kimberly D. Krawiec, “Commodification (Or Not) In The Oocyte Market”

Benny Shmueli, “Trading the Right to Divorce: On Inalienability, Commodification, and Using Liability Rules in Cases of Refusal to Divorce”

Ram Rivlin, “The Puzzle of Intra-Familial Commodification”

 

19:30-20:30            Marketizing the State

               

Mitu Gulati, "A Market For Sovereign Control?" (With Joseph Blocher)

Talia Fisher & Tsilly Dagan, “The Market and the State”

 

*Please RSVP to Tsilly Dagan ([email protected]) or Kim Krawiec ([email protected]) if you plan to attend.

Will the Real Evidence-Based Ebola Policy Please Stand Up? Seven Takeaways From Maine DHHS v. Hickox

UPDATES (11/9/14): NPR reports that Hickox's boyfriend  has withdrawn from nursing school and that the two will move out of the state after Nov. 10. Alas, in so reporting, NPR claims that Maine had "sought a court order to require [Hickox] to stay indoors." Apparently NPR doesn't read TFL (or court petitions). Meanwhile, I found this recent JAMA news report about what we do and don't know about Ebola enlightening. Both links via Ross Silverman on Twitter (@phlu). Finally, thanks to Christian Turner for plugging the post on the latest episode of the always interesting Oral Argument podcast.

The case I mentioned in my last post, Maine Department of Health and Human Services v. Kaci Hickox is no more. Hickox and public health officials agreed to stipulate to a final court order imposing on Hickox the terms that the court had imposed on her in an earlier, temporary order. Until Nov. 10, when the 21-day incubation period for Ebola ends, Hickox will submit to "direct active monitoring" and coordinate her travel with Maine public health authorities to ensure that such monitoring occurs uninterrupted. She has since said that she will not venture into town or other public places, although she is free to do so.

Below is a detailed account of the case, which suggests the following lessons:

1. As Hickox herself described it, the result of her case is a “compromise,” reflecting neither what Hickox nor what Maine initially wanted.
2. That compromise was achieved by the parties availing themselves of the legal process, not through Hickox’s civil disobedience.
3. The compromise is not easily described, as it has been, as a victory of science-based federal policy over fear-based state demagoguery. By the time the parties got to court, and perhaps even before then, what Maine requested was consistent with U.S. CDC Guidance, albeit a strict application of it. What Hickox had initially offered to do, by contrast, fell below even the most relaxed application of those guidelines, although by the time the parties reached court, she had agreed to comply with that minimum.
4. The compromise applies only to Hickox, and was based on a stipulation by the parties to agree to the terms that the court had temporarily imposed after reviewing a limited evidentiary record. Additional evidence and legal arguments that the state might have raised in the now-cancelled two-day hearing could have resulted in a different outcome.
5. A substantially different outcome, however, would have been unlikely under Maine’s public health statute. Indeed, it is not clear that Maine’s public health statute allows public health authorities to compel asymptomatic people at-risk of developing Ebola to do anything, including comply with minimum CDC recommendations.
6. “Quarantine” is a charged, but ambiguous, term. It allows us to talk past one another, to shorthand and needlessly politicize a much-needed debate about appropriate policy, and to miss the fact that the CDC Guidance in some cases recommends what could be fairly described as a "quarantine" for people like Hickox and requires it for asymptomatic people with stronger exposure to Ebola (but who are still probably less likely to get sick than not).
7. It’s not clear who has bragging rights to Ebola policy "grounded in science," or what that policy looks like.

Above the (Public Health) Law: Healthcare Worker Deception & Disobedience in a Time of Distrust

Addendum and updates (latest: 4 pm, 10/31) added below

 

A physician shall . . . be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians . . . engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.

 

—AMA Principles of Medical Ethics

 

 

This is a troubling series of news reports about deception and defiance on the part of some healthcare workers (HCWs) in response to what they believe to be unscientific, unfair, and unconstitutional public health measures:

(1) Ebola Aide Doc: I'm Not Telling My Team To Tell The Truth

Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an epidemiologist and Global Projects Manager for the Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation, who has led teams of doctors to treat Ebola in West Africa, reported that he "can't tell them [his doctors] to tell the truth [to U.S. officials]" on Monday's "CNN Newsroom."

“At the moment these people are so valuable . . . I have to ensure they come back here, they get the rest needed. I can't tell them to tell the truth at the moment because we're seeing so much irrational behavior,” he stated. “I've come back numerous times between the U.S. and West Africa. If I come back now and say ‘I've been in contact with Ebola patients,’ I'm going to be locked in my house for 21 days,” Macgregor-Skinner said as his reason for not being truthful with officials, he added, “when I'm back here in the US, I am visiting US hospitals everyday helping them get prepared for Ebola. You take me out for three weeks, who’s going to replace me and help now US hospitals get ready? Those gaps can't be filled.” 

He argued that teams of doctors and nurses could be trusted with the responsibility of monitoring themselves, stating, “When I bring my team back we are talking each day on video conferencing, FaceTime, Skype, text messaging, supporting each other. As soon as I feel sick I’m going to stay at home and call for help, but I’m not going to go to a Redskins game here in Washington D.C. That's irresponsible, but I need to get back to these hospitals and help them be prepared.

UPDATE: Here is the CNN video of his remarks.

(2) Ebola Doctor 'Lied' About NYC Travels

The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said. Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said. “He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said. Spencer finally ’fessed up when a cop “got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department,” a source said. Officials then retraced Spencer’s steps, which included dining at The Meatball Shop in Greenwich Village and bowling at The Gutter in Brooklyn.

 

UPDATE 11PM, 10/30: A spokesperson for the NYC healh department has now disputed the above story, which cites anonymous police officer sources, in a statement provided to CNBC. The spokesperson said: "Dr. Spencer cooperated fully with the Health Department to establish a timeline of his movements in the days following his return to New York from Guinea, providing his MetroCard, credit cards and cellphone." . . . When CNBC asked again if Spencer had at first lied to authorities or otherwise mislead them about his movements in the city, Lewin replied: "Please refer to the statement I just sent. As this states, Dr. Spencer cooperated fully with the Health Department."

(3) Ebola nurse in Maine rejects home quarantine rules [the WaPo headline better captures the gist: After fight with Chris Christie, nurse Kaci Hickox will defy Ebola quarantine in Maine]

Kaci Hickox, the Ebola nurse who was forcibly held in an isolation tent in New Jersey for three days, says she will not obey instructions to remain at home in Maine for 21 days. "I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," Hickox tells TODAY's Matt Lauer. "I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public."

Maine health officials have said they expect her to agree to be quarantined at her home for a 21-day period. The Bangor Daily News reports. But Hickox, who agreed to stay home for two days, tells TODAY she will pursue legal action if Maine forces her into continued isolation. "If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom," she says.

On the evolving Hickox situation, it's unclear whether — as Hickox herself has suggested — she is already under a mandatory home quarantine order, which she is threatening to defy by leaving her house on Thursday morning and (unless it's been lifted) suing, or whether — as her attorneys say — she is currently under no such quarantine order and is free to leave her house at any time (but is choosing to rest for a couple of days). In any case, Maine has clearly said that it is prepared to get a court order to enforce (or impose) a quarantine order.

 

More after the jump...

 

Another HKU Summer, and Students As Colleagues

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was in China this summer on a variety of work-related activities, including attending a conference in Shanghai, visiting alumni in China and Taiwan, and teaching at the Duke-HKU Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law in Hong Kong.  This was my second summer at the Institute, and I always have a great time there. 

Hong Kong is such a wonderful city and HKU is, to my mind, a gorgeous urban campus, with harbor and peak views, koi ponds and other cool landscaping, easy access to the peak, and a fabulous new building with the latest classroom technology.  This year, though, was especially fun because I was able to co-teach a mini-course on financial derivatives with one of my former financial derivatives students, Shinichi Yoshiya, now at Davis Polk’s Tokyo office.  Shin was already an experienced lawyer, and particularly experienced with derivatives regulation, when he was a student at Duke, having worked at both Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Securities before coming to Duke for his LL.M.  I did a post about a paper he did on central clearing when he was a student, here.

It was great to be back in one of my favorite cities and even better to be there teaching with one of my favorite (former) students!   

I've posted some trip photos here, with views of and from HKU.  I had planned to repost them here, but typepad is just annoying me too much right now.  

Shanghai: Work, Food, and More

I was in Shanghai last week for the first time, attending a conference and an alumni dinner. The conference – The 2014 International Forum on Financial Law — was at KoGuan Law School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and was a lot of fun. The conference format was a new one for me and I thought worked very well, especially for an international audience.

The morning consisted of public lectures by party officials, regulators, practitioners, and academics with simultaneous translation. One or two of the Chinese academics were fairly critical of various aspects of the Chinese legal system, and watching the responses from fellow presenters and audience members was especially interesting, though I’m sure that I missed many of the subtleties of these exchanges.

The afternoon was divided into parallel sessions, one in Chinese and one in English, with paper presentations by invited guests. My presentation was in the English session, of course, so I can only speak to the specifics of that one, but I was very pleased with the quality of the presentations and discussion. I learned some new things about emerging corporate law and financial regulation issues in China, Singapore, and Japan, and was struck by both the similarities and the differences of the concerns: for example, several of the papers were on shadow banking in China, which is clearly a concern (as it is in the U.S.), but the character of shadow banking appears quite different in China, making the US experience only partially comparable.

My panel line-up was scheduled as follows, though for scheduling reasons there was a last minute switch of Shen Wei’s presentation on Chinese local government debt and shadow banking (which was excellent) instead of Cheng-Yun Tsang (who did a fine job on the next panel):

Host: Shen Wei, Professor of KoGuan Law School, SJTU

Discussant: Douglas Arner, Professor of The University of Hong Kong

Speakers:

Kim Krawiec, Professor of School of Law, Duke University

Wang Jiangyu, Associate Professor of Law School, National University of Singapore

Manabu Matsunaka, Professor of Nagoya University

Tang Yingmao, Associate Professor of Law School, Peking University

Cheng-Yun Tsang, Doctoral Student of School of Law, Duke University

Naturally, I made time for some food tourism as well (courtesy of UnTour, which I highly recommend). Included are photos of my street food breakfast in Shanghai on the day of departure, which was delicious, and can be roughly divided into three categories: noodles, dim sum, and deep fried dough (yum, yum!)

 

Colonial Building Trivia Question

This one's a little easier than the last building trivia question (the Caleb Pusey house in Chester, Pennsylvania), but I took it from a different perspective than you usually see for this house.  It's one of the first buildings in America turned into a tourist attraction for its historical significance I am told.  Makes  sense.

What and where?

AMV Seminario De Control Interno Y Compliance: Bogotá, Colombia

As some of you may have been able to guess from the photos I posted yesterday, I was in Bogotá, Colombia this past weekend as a guest of the Autorregulador del Mercado del Valores de Colombia to speak at their III Seminario De Control Interno Y Compliance: Experiencias Y Mejores Prácticas En Los Mercados De Activos Financieros. 

This was really a fabulous program – well organized, with excellent simultaneous translation and interesting speakers (the list is below).  Special thanks are due to Ana María Prieto Ariza, Subdirectora de Divisas, for taking such good care of the foreign speakers, and to AMV President Roberto Borrás Polanía for hosting us. 

The conference was a particularly interesting mix of different geographical and subject matter areas of expertise – US, Colombian, and Mexican and legal, accounting, and risk management, in particular. Such a combination always presents the danger that people will talk past each other, but I didn’t find that to be the case here.  In fact, as we speakers discussed among ourselves at lunch and dinner, we were all pleasantly surprised at the numerous points of commonality across our presentations, and by how much we still had to share with each other after the formal conference concluded. 

I was at the seminar to talk about “rogue trading” – a topic I also discussed at last year’s Risk Management Association annual Governance, Compliance and Operational Risk Conference in Cambridge.  This year, however, I spent a good chunk of the presentation discussing the ongoing criminal trial of Kweku Adoboli, the alleged UBS rogue trader accused last year of losing $2.3 billion.  On Friday, the court added two additional false accounting charges.  Adoboli thus now stands accused of four counts of false accounting and two counts of fraud by abuse of position.

I’ll return shortly to talk some more about various elements of the trial and, in particular, the differences and similarities between the Adoboli case and other recent rogue trading incidents.  

 

Speakers List:

* Gerardo Hernández Correa, Superintendente Financiero de Colombia

* Roberto Borrás Polanía, Presidente, Autorregulador del Mercado de Valores de Colombia (AMV) 

* Leonardo Villar Gómez, Director Ejecutivo, Fedesarrollo

* Muna D. Buchahin, Vicepresidenta, Asociación de Examinadores de Fraude Certificados (ACFE), México

* Kimberly D. Krawiec, Professor of Law - Duke Law School, North Carolina

* Rosemary Hollinger, Asesor regional, Commodity Future Trading Commision (CFTC), Chicago 

* Arnulfo Vanegas Montenegro, Director de Supervisión, Autorregulador del Mercado de Valores de Colombia (AMV)

* Álvaro Tirado Quintero, Presidente, Interbolsa

* Diego Jiménez Posada, Presidente, Correval

* Alonso Ángel Lozano, Vicepresidente de Inversión, Porvenir 

 

Photo top right: Funeral mask, El Museo del Oro

Photo middle left: building in La Candelaria

The Weekend

More to follow . . . 

 

2012 Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law

So, as some of you guessed from the photos (or because I told you before I left), I just recently returned from teaching in a joint Duke-Hong Kong University summer program – the Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law.  This was the first time I taught in the program, or visited Hong Kong, and I think I miss it already. 

 I had a great group of students from all over the world, including a fair number from Hong Kong and Mainland China.  I also had wonderful hosts from HKU – Douglas Arner and Simon Young – who many Loungers no doubt already know, as well as unofficial private dining guide, Chin Lim, who -- when he is not advising governments on their trade agreeemnts -- provides some of the best conversation, restaurant advice, and luxury car spotting of anyone in Hong Kong.  Class was held in the new (mostly finished) law school building, that will be amazing when fully open -- latest technology in the classrooms, fabulous conference space, great views from faculty offices (!!  -- I have a view of a dumpster from my Duke office). 

The photo above is the big Buddha in Lantau, an excursion taken with new friend, Haochen Sun -- assistant professor at HKU (and currently finishing up his Duke SJD), unofficially known as "the best ever North Carolina-Hong Kong liason and tour guide."  Many of you in the IP area probably already know Haochen, but if not you can plan to meet him next year when he visits at UC Davis.

Anyway, though I loved Hong Kong, it is good to be back with the Loungers again. Happy summer to all!

And then there's this . . .

Yes, I realize how geeky it is that my major trip highlights include a visit to the apple store.

Where I've been . . .

I've been absent from the Lounge for a bit this summer . . . and I've missed you guys!  

Details to follow.

Summer Travelogue

I've been a little quiet lately because I actually roamed out of the country for the first time in several years and had blissfully no Internet access for almost a whole week.

Went to Cambridge (the real one, not the one in MA ...) to attend my Ph.D. graduation and here's what I discovered about overseas travel having not done it in a while:

1/ There are some airlines I still like - Air Canada thank you!

2/ No matter how hard you plan, you can't rely on Internet access, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

3/ No matter how careful you are with your bits and pieces, you always lose something.  The casualty on this trip was my camera battery charger which is an improvement over having lost a Kindle last year on a domestic trip.

4/ If you drink enough with Cambridge college students, some of them will STILL remember you fifteen years later ....

5/ You can avoid Olympic customs/immigration queues at Heathrow if you time the flight just right.

6/ It's always rainy in the U.K., even in the summer.

7/ Due to economic woes, there are less British pubs than there used to be.

8/ Movies and meals are still free on international flights, but if you watch movies on those tiny screens, you get a headache.

Here's some photos of the grand old town ...

 

 

Necropolis in Agrigento

Because he knows of my love of cemeteries, my colleague Bill Turnier has sent along this photograph of the necropolis in Agrigento.

Nuremberg, Interpretation, and the Nazi Aesthetic

I've just returned from leading the law program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics ("FASPE"), which I blogged about extensively when I did the trip last year.  (Go here and scroll down a bit.)  FASPE is a traveling seminar that looks at professional ethics and identity through the lens of the Holocaust.  The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York sponsors the trip. 

This year we added a visit to the city of Nuremberg -- the birth site of the racial laws that today bear the city's name, the home of Hitler's annual mass rallies (until the war started), and the site of the post-war trials of major German perpetrators by the International Military Tribunal.

I found myself unsettled by the interpretive approach at the Documentation Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds, the museum that presents the megalomania of the Nazis' architectural and propaganda efforts at Nuremberg.  The museum is in the Congress Hall:

Most of the interpretive materials in the museum document the crazy enormous grandeur of the buildings and grounds that the Nazis built to showcase their 1000-year Reich and the extravagance of the mass displays of patriotism they engineered.  Toward the end of the exhibit, the visitor comes upon a smaller area documenting the genocide in which this all culminated.

This is, I suppose, as it should be:  what the museum interprets is its site, and the site is principally about Nazi architecture and propaganda -- about the Nazis' ascension to and cementing of power.  It's not chiefly about genocide.  Yet I found the site disturbing.  There is a certain awe-inspiring beauty to the Nazis' architecture and their patriotic displays.  They were an astonishing achievement, and there is a riveting aesthetic to them.  It made me deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge these things.

I came to Nuremberg from a visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau.  That provided more than enough ballast against the odd fascination of Nuremberg.  Much more than enough.  I wonder, though, whether some visitors to Nuremberg focus more on the aesthetic and less on the horror -- more on the Nazis' improbable achievement of order from chaos and less on where it all ended up.  

To be sure, the museum depicts the sobering impact of the Nazi propaganda machine, like this German first-grader's school drawing:

"The Jews are our misfortune," it says, parroting one of the ubiquitous Nazi placards of the day.  (The young artist's name is concealed; he or she might still be alive.)

But this was a little paper in an out-of-the-way display case.  I would have sooner seen this blown up huge on the wall in place of one of the wall-sized rally photos.

Trite Airline Slogans

Being based in Cleveland, previously a Continental Airlines hub, I am now a victim, er customer, of the new United Airlines presence in North East Ohio.  Very recently the merger between the two airlines was completed and I took my first flight this week under the new United processes.  It was a truly surreal experience for a number of reasons.  The Continental staff don't seem to have been trained particularly well in the new computer systems and spent a lot of time griping about how they didn't know how to make simple changes to people's tickets anymore, and calling for help.  The boarding procedure now involves splitting even tiny little regional jets into 8 or more boarding zones including 3 or 4 zones for various levels of frequent flyer members.  The gate lounge agents seemed mystified as to who was supposed to board in what order.

But I think my favorite change was in the trite airline slogans prominently displayed throughout and around the Cleveland airport.  I didn't think much of Continental's "Work Hard, Fly Right" billboards in the past.  I mean, c'mon, is that really a VISION for a major airline?  Did we really think they were going to 'be lazy' and 'fly poorly'?  But the Continental slogan was a work of literature in comparison to United's new "Place your Expectations in the Upright Position".  I'm still puzzling over what mental contortions I would need to attempt in order to place my expectations in the appropriate position.  And even if I did manage it, I fear I would be sorely disappointed if this week's experience was anything to go by.

 

The "Ethics" of Nazism

I attended an outstanding talk on Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City by Holocaust scholar Thorsten Wagner on the subject of what one might call "Nazi Ethics" -- the emerging notion that the Nazi system of  terror might be understood as grounded in a coherent (while also of course evil and horrifying) set of ethical norms.  This enterprise is no exercise in Holocaust denial or justification -- far from it.  It is rather an effort to understand the Germany of 1933 to 1945 as in some way continuous, rather than discontinuous, with ordinary (perhaps even universal) human experience.

A centerpiece of Wagner's presentation was an astonishing excerpt from a speech that Heinrich Himmler delivered in October of 1943 to a large gathering of SS officials in Poznan (German: "Posen"), Poland.  Most obviously astonishing is Himmler's frank discussion of mass murder in simple, direct terms, without any of the code language that the leadership typically used to conceal their program.  At a level beneath that, though, is the equally astonishing ethical framing of Himmler's appeal to the SS.  That framing should be quite recognizable to us all; it's the invocation of the honor that comes from a loyal commitment to the uglier aspects of duty.

The excerpt lasts about 6 minutes.  If you have the time, have a look/listen:

 

Why Iceland Should Be Your New Favorite Place

So, I promised more details on the setting for the beautiful waterfall photo that I posted yesterday.  I was in Iceland, giving a talk at Reykjavik University, and some of you recognized the location as Gullfoss.  This was my first trip to Iceland and it was spectacular!  Icelanders are some of the warmest people you’d ever want to meet (their climate less so – remember, I’m southern) and the country is beautiful.

My incredibly gracious hosts for the trip were Ragnhildur Helgadóttir, Professor of law, and Friðrik Már Baldursson, dean of the school of business.  Ragnhildur is a UVA alum, having done both her LLM and SJD there, and is the author of several recent books, including, Almannatryggingar og félagsleg aðstoð [Social Security Law] (with Guðmundur Sigurðsson) and The Influence of American Theories on Judicial Review in Nordic Constitutional Law.

 And Friðrik, in addition to being about the nicest, most unassuming person in the world, is also the only business school dean I’ve ever met who is also a statistician and mathematician.  Friðrik was formerly a faculty member at Columbia’s statistics department, before making his way to the econ departments and business schools at University of Iceland and then Reykjavik.  His research involves energy and environmental issues, among other things.     

I was quite excited to present this paper to an Icelandic audience.  The topic was public involvement in banking reform issues and, as most Lounge readers already know, Iceland was faced with a banking crisis that garnered international attention – and litigation – a few years ago.  For those who don’t remember the crisis, or never followed it, NPR Planet Money had several podcasts that are a great introduction to some of the issues.  I would link to them here, had I not given up after 20 minutes of vainly searching for them [Note to NPR: work on that podcast search feature.]

One of the most striking aspects of the dispute, to me, was the use of public referenda (two, I believe) on Icesave.  So, I assumed that my Icelandic audience would have quite different views about public involvement in financial issues than a US audience might.  But, that turned out not to be the case, I think. 

One of the things we discussed (and that I address in the paper) was the tension between the ideal of public involvement as a check on special interest capture of the political process, and the general inability of the public to understand – or even care about – these issues enough to act as an effective check that goes beyond “banks are greedy.”  

And a very refreshing aspect of the Reykjavik workshop culture is that the local community is invited to, and attends, faculty workshops.  So members of the local business bar (particularly banking specialists), the press, and the local business community were at the workshop and participated in the Q&A.  It was especially nice to have this discussion that cut across, not only national boundaries, but professional ones as well.

Like Roger, just a whole bunch of reasons to make Iceland my new favorite place.

Law School Buildings: Liberty University School of Law

Things seem strangely quiet around the faculty lounge of late.  Because I'm buried in work I'm not able to write posts these days, but I thought that I'd put up a few pictures from recent trips.  I'm starting with a picture of Liberty University's law school, which I took this summer when I was on my way up to Lexington for some research.

Next up, perhaps some photographs of the Lynchburg City Cemetery?

Heart Mountain: A Virtual Visit

A little over a week ago, the new Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center opened outside of Cody, Wyoming.

Kevin J. Miyazaki, a very talented photographer, was on hand.  He took some pictures that captured the spirit of the event.  Here are a few.

This is the exterior of the museum.  It is designed to capture the feel of the barracks that once stood at the site.

This is the largest gallery.  It presents exhibits on various aspects of life behind barbed wire.

A highlight of the Grand Opening was a joint presentation by retired Wyoming Senator Alan K. Simpson (right) and former U.S. Commerce and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (left).  The two met as boy scouts when Mineta and his family were confined at Heart Mountain.  Simpson lived in neighboring Cody.

This display recreates a Heart Mountain barrack room as a family would have found it on the day they arrived in the fall of 1942.

It was very moving to see former Heart Mountain internees return to the site.  Here a group of former internees visit an exhibit showing a barrack room as a resourceful family might have outfitted it in order to make it livable.

The last spot on the visit is the Hoshizaki Reflection Area, where visitors can sit and absorb what they've seen.  That's Heart Mountain off in the distance.

Travel Traumas

As most of you know, my family welcomed a new baby girl six months ago which, by my calendar means that it's time for me to end my self-imposed ban on conference attendance and to rejoin the law prof population.

In the last couple of weeks, I have ventured out and taken my first two short trips away from the family for various conferences.  The conferences were great (H/T to the organizers of SEALS and IPSC), but I'm obviously out of practice dealing with flight schedules, airlines, security, ticketing requirements etc.  So here's what I've learned/relearned in the last couple of weeks - and maybe I should blame "mommy brain" for a lot of my travails...

1/ Don't leave expensive electronic items in airplane seat pockets.  Even if you know exactly where and when you left them, and you report the loss promptly, you may not get your items back.

2/ If you take your wallet out of your handbag to put your parking ticket into said handbag, make sure you put the wallet back in your handbag and don't accidentally lock it in the car as you blithely jaunt off to the gate lounge.  (The male equivalent is probably, put the wallet back in your pocket, but then again the male equivalent won't have a case of "mommy brain".)

3/ Leave a big tip for the airport cafe server who takes your word for it that you are a bona fide traveler and have accidentally left the cash (that you needed to pay for your dinner) in the car and will be back in a minute...

4/ Wear good running shoes in case you leave all of your valuables in your car and have to sprint back to the parking lot, narrowly missing your flight.

5/ If carrying a breast-pump, be prepared for thorough searching of your person and your bags every time you go through the security line even if you just went through the same line with the same screeners 30 minutes earlier with all the same stuff in your bags.

6/ If you change your outbound flight, don't count on the airline having not accidentally cancelled your return flight without letting you know because they had no record of you getting on the outbound flight that you originally booked.  [Or, a simpler rule, NEVER change your outbound flight.]

Did travelling get more difficult since I last travelled or is mommy-brain to blame for all my angst?