SPLIT DECISIONS: PRACTICAL MACHINE LEARNING FOR EMPIRICAL LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP

Multivariable regression may be the most prevalent and useful task in social science. Empirical legal studies rely heavily on the ordinary least squares method. Conventional regression methods have attained credibility in court, but by no means do they dictate legal outcomes. Using the iconic Boston housing study as a source of price data, this Article introduces machine-learning regression methods. Although decision trees and forest ensembles lack the overt interpretability of linear regression, these methods reduce the opacity of black-box techniques by scoring the relative importance of dataset features. This Article will also address the theoretical tradeoff between bias and variance, as well as the importance of training, cross-validation, and reserving a holdout dataset for testing

Legal Quanta: A Mathematical Romance of Many Dimensions

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Anthropocene Agricultural Law

This Essay takes stock of humanity’s arguably illusory victory over its old Malthusian foe. Having staved off imminent starvation, wealthy consumers in the United States and other developed nations are now free to focus their legal and political energy on the expressive aspects of food. Such bagatelles come at the price of ignoring deeper threats to the ecological and economic underpinnings of agricultural production. Had we world enough and time, food as ornament would be no crime. The onset of the Anthropocene, however, demands more serious attention to older, more venerable sources of concern. Resource exhaustion and evolutionary biology remain poised to deliver crippling blows to the agricultural system that serves as life support for affluent, industrialized society. As existential threats loom, the continued allure of purely symbolic disputes suggests that agricultural law remains content, quite literally, to bet the farm

Bioprospect Theory

Conventional wisdom treats biodiversity and biotechnology as rivalrous values. The global south is home to most of earth\u27s vanishing species, while the global north holds the capital and technology needed to develop this natural wealth. The south argues that intellectual property laws enable pharmaceutical companies and seed breeders in the industrialized north to commit biopiracy. By contrast, the United States has characterized calls for profit-sharing as a threat to the global life sciences industry. Both sides magnify the dispute, on the apparent consensus that commercial exploitation of genetic resources holds the key to biodiversity conservation. Both sides of this debate misunderstand the relationship between biodiversity and biotechnology. Both sides have overstated the significance of bioprospecting. It is misleading to frame the issue as whether intellectual property in the abstract can coexist with the international legal framework for preserving biodiversity. As a matter of legal gymnastics, any lawyer can reconfigure intellectual property to embrace all of the intangible assets at stake, including raw genetic resources, advanced agricultural and pharmaceutical research, and ethnobiological knowledge

Speculative Undertakings: Rate Regulation as a Branch of Corporate Finance

The law of regulated industries, particularly the obligation to secure \u27just and reasonable rates for regulated services, is a highly specialized application of financial economics. Ratemaking, bluntly put, represents a regulatory exercise in capital asset pricing. As a matter of economics, this Essay describes ratemaking as a variation on the financial theme of uncertainty. As a matter of law, this Essay describes legal principles guiding the regulatory determination of the rate of return on utility property. It analyzes two valuation methods derived from the 1923 Bluefield Water Works decision ( attracting capital and comparable earnings ), as well as a third approach based on the capital asset pricing model. Discretionary elements in rate regulation make it impossible to wholly alleviate uncertainty in the pricing of infrastructure. Rate regulation therefore constitutes a speculative undertaking in its own right

Momentary Lapses of Reason: The Psychophysics of Law and Behavior

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Leaps, Metes, and Bounds: Innovation Law and Its Logistics

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Price-Level Regulation and Its Reform

Price-level, or “price-cap,” regulation offers an alluring alternative to the traditional technique of monitoring a regulated firm’s profits. This Article contrasts price-level regulation with conventional cost-of-service ratemaking and with Ramsey pricing. Price-level regulation stands as a market-based, incentive-driven “third way” between traditional regulation and complete deregulation. Although some jurisdictions have set price caps according to operating cost and rate-of-return calculations that clearly parallel those steps in conventional ratemaking, this Article will focus on price-level methodologies that combine an economy-wide measure of inflation with an x-factor reflecting total factor productivity within a regulated industry. After addressing the simpler component of price-level regulation, the choice of an inflation index, this Article devotes detailed attention to the treatment of the x-factor by two federal ratemaking agencies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Closer examination of price cap methodologies adopted by FERC and the FCC suggests that price-level regulation based on inflation and an industry-specific X factor may be further streamlined. This Article concludes by describing how price-level regulation might be accomplished through the application of a single, industry-specific index of input costs

Αρκτούρος: Protecting Biodiversity Against the Effects of Climate Change Through the Endangered Species Act

Both law and science have achieved an increasingly strong basis over the past decade for addressing biodiversity loss attributable to climate change. Departing from the firm advocacy of expert agencies, the United States Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA held that agencies must enforce federal environmental law despite the uncertainty surrounding climate change. Many legal tools are emerging as instruments of climate change policymaking. This Essay focuses on one specific climate change strategy, the use of the Endangered Species Act, to protect biodiversity from the effects of climate change

Anthropocene Agricultural Law

This Essay takes stock of humanity’s arguably illusory victory over its old Malthusian foe. Having staved off imminent starvation, wealthy consumers in the United States and other developed nations are now free to focus their legal and political energy on the expressive aspects of food. Such bagatelles come at the price of ignoring deeper threats to the ecological and economic underpinnings of agricultural production. Had we world enough and time, food as ornament would be no crime. The onset of the Anthropocene, however, demands more serious attention to older, more venerable sources of concern. Resource exhaustion and evolutionary biology remain poised to deliver crippling blows to the agricultural system that serves as life support for affluent, industrialized society. As existential threats loom, the continued allure of purely symbolic disputes suggests that agricultural law remains content, quite literally, to bet the farm