William D. Nordhaus— Begin by stepping back and asking a basic question. Why is global warming such a special problem? Why is it a global problem and not a national problem or a household problem? Why is it such a persistent problem? The economics of climate change is straightforward. Virtually
Many who declare that Americans in 2018 should stick to the original words of the United States Constitution, ratified in 1788, fail to acknowledge that in reality the nation has been ruled by a substantially different Constitution for the past 150 years. The Union victory in 1865, and the amendments
Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman— We find much of what is said about free speech on college campuses unsatisfying. We are deeply troubled by the efforts to suppress and punish the expression of unpopular ideas. Those who call for punishment of speech that makes students feel uncomfortable fail to recognize
Mark Galeotti— He was quite the most charming contract killer with whom one could imagine having a drink. But nonetheless, for all his cheerful Chechen twinkle, and the ritualised North Caucasus courtesy which meant we had to argue fiercely over the right to pay the bill, even though we both
John B. Nann— The law is society. It is a reflection of the community, it is the rules that govern the community, and it is one of the main tools that a government has to affect the behavior of the community. A government can encourage philanthropy by providing tax deductions
Hannah Pollin-Galay— “The End of the Jewish People is Here.” This is not a headline from the 1940’s but from June 2018. It appeared as one of many articles reporting on a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, which polled American and Israeli Jews on a range of contemporary
Loka Ashwood— Rural Americans do, indeed, have more guns than their urban counterparts. According to the General Social Survey, the highest rates of gun ownership can be found in the most rural areas of the southeast United States. In those wide-open fields and forests, rural residents—black and white—are more likely to
Stephen D. King— Our ideas and institutions shift with alarming regularity. Spanish conquistadors of the early sixteenth century—bounty-hunters hell bent on extracting silver from the New World, regardless of the human cost—would have been surprised to discover that Spain, at one point Europe’s superpower, is now one of the poorer
Dieter Helm— Fast-forward to 2050—almost thirty-five years from now. What will the world look like? How will technology have transformed our daily lives? Will it be a world of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)? Of graphene, fusion, and electric transport? Now rewind—back to 1980. This was still a world of
Joshua Keating— “If you don’t have Borders, you don’t have a Country!” President Trump tweeted this statement most recently on June 19 at the height of the backlash against his administration’s practice of separating the children of undocumented immigrants from their parents. But the idea that unauthorized crossings of the