A Theory of Vague Expected Utility

We propose a new theory of choice between lotteries, which combines an 'economic’ view of decision making - based on a rational, though incomplete, ordering - with a 'psychological’ view - based on heuristics. This theory can explain observed violations of EU theory, namely all cyclical patterns of choice as well as violations of independence.incomplete preference relation; cyclical preferences; expected utility

Why Deporting Immigrants for “Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude” is Now Unconstitutional

In the best of times, immigrants should only be deported according to the rule of law and not by the whim of executive branch officials. Now, it is imperative. Yet the statute authorizing removal of immigrants for “crimes involving moral turpitude” invites officials to base their prosecutorial choices on political or personal views. As a result, defense attorneys advising their clients on the immigration consequences of pleas have no basis for prediction. Although the Supreme Court long ago rejected the argument that the “moral turpitude” clause was void for vagueness, one of the Court’s most recent decisions now makes that conclusion unsupportable. The notion that due process permits officials to banish legal permanent residents based on “moral turpitude,” which never comported with common sense, is now legally incorrect

From Wald to Savage: homo economicus becomes a Bayesian statistician

Bayesian rationality is the paradigm of rational behavior in neoclassical economics. A rational agent in an economic model is one who maximizes her subjective expected utility and consistently revises her beliefs according to Bayes’s rule. The paper raises the question of how, when and why this characterization of rationality came to be endorsed by mainstream economists. Though no definitive answer is provided, it is argued that the question is far from trivial and of great historiographic importance. The story begins with Abraham Wald’s behaviorist approach to statistics and culminates with Leonard J. Savage’s elaboration of subjective expected utility theory in his 1954 classic The Foundations of Statistics. It is the latter’s acknowledged fiasco to achieve its planned goal, the reinterpretation of traditional inferential techniques along subjectivist and behaviorist lines, which raises the puzzle of how a failed project in statistics could turn into such a tremendous hit in economics. A couple of tentative answers are also offered, involving the role of the consistency requirement in neoclassical analysis and the impact of the postwar transformation of US business schools.Savage, Wald, rational behavior, Bayesian decision theory, subjective probability, minimax rule, statistical decision functions, neoclassical economics

Why Deporting Immigrants for “Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude” is Now Unconstitutional

In the best of times, immigrants should only be deported according to the rule of law and not by the whim of executive branch officials. Now, it is imperative. Yet the statute authorizing removal of immigrants for “crimes involving moral turpitude” invites officials to base their prosecutorial choices on political or personal views. As a result, defense attorneys advising their clients on the immigration consequences of pleas have no basis for prediction. Although the Supreme Court long ago rejected the argument that the “moral turpitude” clause was void for vagueness, one of the Court’s most recent decisions now makes that conclusion unsupportable. The notion that due process permits officials to banish legal permanent residents based on “moral turpitude,” which never comported with common sense, is now legally incorrect

Uncertainty behind the veil of ignorance

This paper argues that the decision problem in the original position should be characterized as a decision problem under uncertainty even when it is assumed that the denizens of the original position know that they have an equal chance of ending up in any given individual's place. It argues for this claim by arguing that (a) the continuity axiom of decision theory does not hold between all of the outcomes the denizens of the original position face and that (b) neither us nor the denizens of the original position can know the exact point where discontinuity sets in, because the language we employ in comparing different outcomes is ineradicably vague. It is also argued that the account underlying (b) can help proponents of superiority in value theory defend their view against arguments offered by Norcross and Griffin

Notice and the New Deal

The New Deal Supreme Court revised a well-known set of constitutional doctrines. Legal scholarship has principally focused on the changes that occurred in three areas—federalism, delegation, and economic liberty. This Article identifies a new and important fourth element of New Deal constitutionalism: a change in the constitutional doctrine of due process notice, the doctrine that specifies the minimum standards for constitutionally adequate notice of the law. The law of due process notice—which includes the doctrines of vagueness, retroactivity, and the rule of lenity—evolved dramatically over the course of the New Deal to permit lesser clarity and to tolerate more retroactivity. The upshot has been the near-total elimination of successful notice-based challenges other than in the limited context of First Amendment vagueness attacks. Unlike the more famous doctrinal changes of this period, changes to due process notice doctrine were not obviously necessary to accommodate the New Deal legislative agenda, either as a matter of jurisprudence or as a matter of politics. Due process notice doctrine nonetheless underwent a radical transformation in this era, as the Court came to regard its broader shift toward deferring to legislative and executive policy decisions as requiring the relaxation of due process notice doctrine. The link forged between deference and notice had significant functional effects on the most important audience for the Court\u27s notice jurisprudence—Congress. By loosening the strictures of due process notice doctrine, the Court lowered sharply the enactment costs of federal legislation and thereby facilitated its proliferation. This is a distinct, and hitherto unacknowledged, mechanism by which the Court in this period enhanced national power and encouraged the flourishing of the emerging administrative state. Like much of the New Deal settlement, the New Deal reformulation of due process notice doctrine is today the subject of ferment in the courts. Recognizing the New Deal roots of due process notice doctrine is critical for understanding these ongoing judicial debates—and for beginning the conceptual work of mapping the future shape of this vital cluster of doctrines

Degree supervaluational logic

Supervaluationism is often described as the most popular semantic treatment of indeterminacy. There???s little consensus, however, about how to fill out the bare-bones idea to include a characterization of logical consequence. The paper explores one methodology for choosing between the logics: pick a logic that norms belief as classical consequence is standardly thought to do. The main focus of the paper considers a variant of standard supervaluational, on which we can characterize degrees of determinacy. It applies the methodology above to focus on degree logic. This is developed first in a basic, single-premise case; and then extended to the multipremise case, and to allow degrees of consequence. The metatheoretic properties of degree logic are set out. On the positive side, the logic is supraclassical???all classical valid sequents are degree logic valid. Strikingly, metarules such as cut and conjunction introduction fail

\u3ci\u3eHeller\u3c/i\u3e‘s Collateral Damage: As-Applied Challenges to the Felon-in-Possession Prohibition

A longstanding firearm regulation in the United States prohibits individual convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors from possessing a firearm. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, waves of litigation challenged, among other laws, the felon-in-possession prohibition. Due to the lack of clarity in Heller and the Court’s refusal to address it, there is an unsettling circuit split over whether and how an individual can mount an as-applied challenge to the felon-in-possession prohibition. A decade after Heller, the Third Circuit upheld the first successful asapplied challenge while four circuits have denied the permissibility of these challenges, creating an urgent need for clarification from the Court. Because the Court denied certiorari in the Third Circuit case, the present state of the law is that an individual’s right to restore their Second Amendment rights is determined by where they live. The resulting issue cannot be relegated to the gun control debate and instead represents a constitutional dilemma that demands resolution by the Court. This Note argues that the Court is shirking its duties and should not continue to leave a fundamental right subject to an individual’s residence