Academic

Will There be Lawyers in Heaven?--Skeel

Posted on December 09, 2008
            A few weeks ago, I was struck by a line in Abraham Kuyper's "Lectures on Calvinism" (1898), one of the great (and accessible!) modern Protestant works on politics and law.   In a world without sin, Kuyper wrote, "every rule...

Paris--Skeel

Posted on November 29, 2008
I`ve been in Paris this week for a wonderful conference at the University of Paris-Nanterre.  It`s my third visit to Paris, separated by twenty years from my second (a short visit during my honeymoon) and twenty-four from my first (a...

Clinton and Geithner, not Holbrooke and Summers--Stuntz

Posted on November 21, 2008
According to news reports, Timothy Geithner, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, will be the new Treasury Secretary--not Larry Summers.  Perhaps Hillary Clinton and Summers in the top two slots was one ex-Clinton official too many:  as...

For Larry Summers--Stuntz

Posted on November 21, 2008
It would be an exaggerated piece of name-dropping to say that I know Larry Summers.  I'm one of thousands of people who've had contact with him over the years.  For me, that contact consists of two hour-long conversations with him...

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Chemo's End, Cancer's Closet--Stuntz

Posted on November 20, 2008
On Wednesday of this week, I had my last chemo session--at least for awhile and maybe for good.  I'm not quite done--I'll carry around a pump with a drug called (believe it or not) 5-FU until tomorrow afternoon.  Cancer treatment...

Where Should GM File for Bankruptcy?--Skeel

Posted on November 18, 2008
The most surprising development in the Big 3's campaign for a bailout has been the amount of resistence it's met. Surprising to me, at least. After all the money that's been committed to the financial bailout, I assumed the carmakers...

A Too-Transparent Treasury--Skeel

Posted on November 14, 2008
In their handling of the credit crisis, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve have repeatedly been criticized for their lack of transparency. The decisions as to which financial institutions to bail out have been made behind closed doors, the complaint...

Five Things I Love About This Country--Stuntz

Posted on November 06, 2008
Speaking as a conflicted McCain voter, I'd say Obama's election captures the five things I love most about my country.  In no particular order:   1.  Not counting his years living abroad, the President-elect has lived in Hawaii, California, New...

Obama's Victory--Skeel

Posted on November 05, 2008
A little over a month ago, just as it was becoming clear that Barack Obama would win the election, I happened to be reading several commentaries on the Civil Rights Movement written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose theology was...

Good News on the Cancer Front--Stuntz

Posted on October 31, 2008
On Wednesday of this week, I heard that the latest round of films were clean--no tumors in my lungs or in my abdomen.  Lungs and livers are the places advanced-stage colon cancer likes best.  The fact that they appear to...

McCain or Obama?--Stuntz

Posted on October 31, 2008
This Stuart Taylor column captures half of my frustration with this presidential election.  Taylor argues that, if Obama governs as a centrist, he could have a spectacularly successful presidency.  If he governs from the left, Taylor says, he will fail...

The Pulpit Initiative--Skeel

Posted on October 31, 2008
A month ago, 33 pastors around the country preached sermons that overtly endorsed a candidate (usually John McCain) as part of Pulpit Freedom Sunday and the Pulpit Initiative organized by Alliance Defense Fund, a prominent Christian legal fund. The Pulpit...

Health Care and the Election--Stuntz

Posted on October 29, 2008
Health care may be the most heavily covered domestic issue in the current presidential race.  But the coverage has been lousy.  E.g.:  If I understand correctly, McCain's health care proposal would make employer-provided health insurance much more costly (by taxing...

The California Anti Gay Marriage Referendum--Skeel

Posted on October 26, 2008
Reading the daily updates on the prospects of the California Anti-Gay Marriage referendum, I find myself quite conflicted. Like the two presidential candidates, I am not in favor of gay marriage, but I have long been troubled by the tenor...

Is the Era of Big Government Back?--Stuntz

Posted on October 18, 2008
Everyone seems to think so, thanks to the financial crisis.  I wonder.  I have a short article about to come out in The Weekly Standard suggesting otherwise.  The link is here.   Early in his first Administration, Bill Clinton turned...

Teachers, Professors, and Obama Buttons--Skeel

Posted on October 13, 2008
Stanley Fish has an interesting op-ed in this morning's New York Times about whether a school or university can prohibit its teachers from wearing a button advocating a particular candidate in the classroom. Fish argues that such a rule would...

Is Government Ownership the Right Strategy?--Skeel

Posted on October 12, 2008
We now have yet another switch in the Treasury's strategy for stabilizing the markets. Plan A with the $700 billion rescue plan was to use the money to buy some of the questionable mortgage-related securities that are held by the nation's troubled...

C.S. Lewis and the Financial Crisis--Skeel

Posted on October 09, 2008
I suspect I'm not the only one who feels vaguely guilty when I'm not thinking about or talking about or trying in some small, inept way to do something about the financial crisis. Everything else seems secondary. How can we...

Where are the Burkeans?--Stuntz

Posted on October 04, 2008
Along with Friedrich Hayek, Edmund Burke is among the intellectual fathers of American conservatism.  Hayek taught conservatives to love freedom.  Burke taught conservatives to respect tradition even when its rationale seems obscure, for tradition often represents the accumulated wisdom of...

Bailout Stories--Skeel

Posted on October 02, 2008
One reason the current financial crisis seems so mystifying is, I think, the absence of a simple, coherent story that explains what the crisis is about. The Enron and WorldCom scandals earlier in the decade could be distilled to a...

The War on Executive Compensation--Skeel

Posted on September 23, 2008
As Congress rushes to enact the Treasury's $700 billion bailout plan this week, Obama, McCain, and politicians of both parties are insisting that the bailout include restrictions on executive pay at the firms whose mortgage backed securities will be bought...

Illness, Grace, and Friendship--Stuntz

Posted on September 19, 2008
Not long ago, I read something by Roger Ebert, a skilled and insightful movie critic who has battled thyroid cancer and related conditions for a long time now, in which Ebert said roughly this:  Cancer patients are widely seen as...

McCain's Age--Stuntz

Posted on September 19, 2008
Like millions of my fellow citizens, I have a bad back; I take prescription pain medications for it.  Three years ago, I had a long conversation with a doctor who, in addition to his clinical work, does research on chronic...

The Candidates and the Crisis--Skeel

Posted on September 17, 2008
I wasn't among those who were disturbed about the increasingly trivial bickering between Senators McCain and Obama until the tumultuous events in the financial services markets over the past several days. I'm now greatly disturbed, because I fear that a...

Lehman's Demise--Skeel

Posted on September 15, 2008
The government's dance with Lehman after having bailed out Bear Stearns reminded me of a game we used to play as kids. One kid would stand in front of another and fall backwards. The idea was that the kid in...

Sarah Palin's Faith, and Mine--Stuntz

Posted on September 13, 2008
I didn't like Mike Huckabee's campaign in the Republican primaries, because Huckabee argued, sometimes explicitly, that Christian voters should support him because he's a Christian.  I wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but that sealed the point for me...

The McCain-Palin Salvo on Fannie Mae--Skeel

Posted on September 09, 2008
I may be over-reading the McCain-Palin op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this morning, but it seems to me to mark a sharp break from the Bush administration on the subprime crisis. Not on...

The Bible in Palin's Speech--Skeel

Posted on September 04, 2008
I found myself listening for Biblical echoes in Sarah Palin's speech last night after hearing the familiar cadences of Ecclesiastes in its opening paragraphs, when she said that the voters rallied behind McCain in the primaries because he understands "there...

Palin, Obama, and the Experience Issue--Stuntz

Posted on August 29, 2008
Everything is faster in the internet age.  It took about ten seconds from the time McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate for the conventional wisdom to congeal:  Palin forfeits the experience issue and opens the way for attacks...

Lake House--Stuntz

Posted on August 28, 2008
Thanks to the kindness of some local friends, Ruth and I have spent most of this week at a lake house in New Hampshire.  It's a remarkable place.  Staggeringly lovely and (much to my surprise) nearly deserted:  I guess the...

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