Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Law and Economics Lecture This Friday

Professor Steven Shavell of Harvard's Center for Law, Economics, and Business will be in town this Friday, October 6 at 3:30 in room 119. He will be giving a talk on "When is it socially advantageous to change legal rules in the light of altered circumstances? - Optimal Legal Change, Past Behavior, and Grandfathering." The public is welcome. For more information on L&E, click here.

This is not a FedSoc sponsored event, but I'm passing it on because I think it will be of particular interest to our members, especially those who aren't able to take the class this year. It's a true shame that the sponsor, our own Law and Econ Professor Steve Calandrillo, is on sabbatical this year. I hope he'll be here next year for his Law and Economics class - not only is he one of the absolute best professors at this school, but the material is fascinating. And Prof. Shavell wrote our textbook, so I expect this event will be very interesting and informative.

L&E isn't a conservative/libertarian doctrine per se, although it is very attractive to many FedSoc members in that it forces people to look quantitatively to actual impact of policy and the law, as opposed to just feeling like something is, like, justice, man. I had to even bring a calculator. But I highly recommend the class if it's available next year. It will challenge a lot of assumptions, and you will look at law and policy differently after the experience, and there's nothing else like it in law school.

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