In a recent post, I suggested that claims about “desert” are generally misplaced in arguments about copyright—whether they are deployed on behalf of “deserving” small fry artists or against “undeserving” labels. As some commenters pointed out, there’s no obvious reason this argument should be restricted to the domain of copyright—and quite right. I think most […]

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Jamelle Bouie lays out several reasons why popular election of judges is a terrible idea: The need to fund-raise (especially in smaller districts) creates conflicts with the requirement of impartiality; judges start handing down longer sentences to appear “tough on crime” during election season; because judicial elections are usually low-priority, they create the illusion of […]

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Will Wilkinson suggests, in a long and interesting post on the scientific debate over the existence of an innate moral capacity, that the absence of such an inborn faculty would tend to bolster the case for moral relativism, while its existence would cut in the other direction. Adam Ozimek at Modeled Behavior follows up: I […]

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