people may have noticed that @vsrikrish.bsky.social and I worked ourselves into a real tizzy last month over something called "RCP 8.5." Thank you to @progressivereform.bsky.social for giving us space and words to explain why!
TLDR: RCP8.5 is totally useful and not deceptive or misleading actually
youtu.be/F7qOV8xonfY?...
So, either the final scene of War Games isn’t in the training data or it *is* in the training data and the LLMs are playing the role of “military AI that hasn’t yet learned tic tac toe”?
One of these things is not like the others
i'm not using legislative history. please don't put in the newspaper that I'm using legislative history.
Things that make you go hmmm?
Everything is depressing except this Floyd Collins clip I made my Property students watch after we discussed Edwards v. Sims. The case is a fight over ownership of a cave. The clip is a gorgeous ode to first possession. youtu.be/0_2WVfmNN4g?...
At the end of the day, there's just no substitute for a government that tackles problems in good faith!
And, sure, you could pass a statute that was even more prescriptive about methodology than the circular, but that would create other problems. Because each rule presents different analytic challenges, and agencies DO need some flexibility.
This is fair. I was being glib. Fairer to say this: I don't think codification of, say, the 2023 Circular A-4 would eliminate CBA-related interpretive shenanigans at either agencies or courts . . .
Well, if it's in the statute in a vaguely worded way, then it's subject to the federal judiciary's interpretive whims. Pick your poison.
one defense of CBA has always been that it forces admins to be explicit about their values....
"Over the past four decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have used different estimates of the monetary value of a human life... But until now, no administration has counted it as zero."
and it was hard to write because those tricks were complicated to explain in <750 non-technical words. So, I guess I sort of appreciate that this time the trick is just "avoided deaths are worth zero dollars now."
Approximately one hundred political years ago, Ricky Revesz and I wrote this op-ed criticizing the accounting tricks the first Trump admin used to make its Clean Power Plan repeal look net beneficial (www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/o...) . . .
I love that the justification for assigning zero quantitative value to health benefits is that they're uncertain. Because there's obviously no uncertainty on the compliance-cost side of the ledger. No need to worry about "false precision" there. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...
Congrats!
Out now in the Yale Law Journal Forum: "Every Court Everywhere All at Once," in which I try to make the phrase "multiversal forum shopping" happen. www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/every-...
"In Ohio v. EPA, the Court faulted the agency for not adequately grappling, at the time of rulemaking, with at least some subset of the millions of alternate futures that judicial intervention could create." @jacklienke.bsky.social "explores its troubling implications for future rulemaking."
Thank you for sharing the piece!
And sure, the administrative state is on fire, but, with any luck, we'll eventually put that fire out and return our attention to non-emergent problems. And when we do, this paper will be right here waiting for you.
And look, I know that sounds . . . really boring. But if you care about programs like Medicaid and SNAP (and thus about the legal durability of regulatory efforts to increase/decrease their generosity), this paper is for you!
The piece explores why agencies struggle to assess the costs and benefits of transfer rules (basically, regs that govern the administration of spending programs), why that struggle matters, and what the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs can do about the problem.
Working with the students at MJLR was a delight from start to finish. Grateful to them for taking a chance on a wonky piece from a junior scholar and for their consistent professionalism, kindness, and editorial incisiveness.
Very happy to see my article Justifying Redistributive Regulations achieve its final form in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Would like to take this Earth Day to issue final warning to all birds with feather-covered beaks. Looks weird; cut it out. You’ve been warned. (Pictured: great eared nightjar; Great Potoo)
In re: absolutely nothing going on in the world: The SLA team at Earthjustice is looking for an early-career attorney to join us as an Associate Counsel. DC preferred. 1-5 years of experience including any clerkships. Salary is based on experience; range is $106,400-$125,300 in DC.
Quite the arc
MANY CONGRATULATIONS to @madisoncondon.bsky.social for winning (one of) the ALI Early Career Scholars Medal!!!
www.ali.org/news/article...
Thanks, Rachel! It's still a draft, so feedback is very welcome.
And here's the tweet that became the essay: