Shell Games

[Robert Sheridan]

Paul Krugman, Princeton economics professor, NYT Op-Ed columist and  
Nobel Laureate in Economics, in "The Return of Depression Economics  
and the Crisis of 2008 (W.W. Norton, 2009, 1999), writes:

"The only way to make sense of any complex system, be it global  
weather or the global economy, is to work with models --simplified  
representations of that system which you hope help you understand how  
it works.

...whimsicality, a willingness to play with ideas, is not merely  
entertaining but essential in times like these.  Never trust an  
aircraft designer who refuses to play with models, and never trust an  
economic pundit who refuses to play with model economies."  P. 18.

We play with models, too.

I tell students that Conlaw is the Operating System and that all the  
other subjects they study, Contracts, Crimes, Torts, Civil Procedure,  
etc. are the applications programs which must comply with the  
principles of the OS, or else.  It works for me.

Justice Scalia likens the Constitution to a restaurant menu.

His model bothers me because as analogies go, this being a form of  
modeling, and he seems really to mean his, it breaks down fairly  
readily.  While some restaurant patrons may feel compelled to stick to  
the menu or be disappointed, many restaurant owners welcome off-menu  
orders in the interest of staying in business.

The Scalia model hides the fact that someone wrote the menu he's  
sticking us with and they're all dead, while in the meantime, we've  
got new owners, who, presumably, are empowered to add new rights to  
the menu either by amendment or the time-honored practice (except  
among a particular wing of the justices) of judicial interpretation.

Speaking of more or less persuasive models, Alan Greenspan's recent  
autobiography recounts any number of real world examples of how the  
economy works, or worked, in his view of the world.

Krugman lists any number of models, in the form of accounts of the  
Mexican economy, the Argentine economy, the Chilean economy, etc.,  
which in his different view form the basis of drawing the real lessons  
from history, politics and economics.  Krugman is very critical of  
Greenspan, in case you hadn't picked up on this in the news, blaming  
him in large part for the derivatives crisis by failing to see the  
signs and failing to regulate.

The "ultimate objective" in studying these models, he says (P. 6), "is  
to develop the theory of the case [a term that has a ring to it; I  
wonder where the economics professors cribbed this] -- to figure out  
how to think about this stuff."

My guess is that the cases we study in law school, and in law practice  
apply, are themselves models, based on the premise, and promise, more  
or less, that what has gone before will come again, given the same  
circumstances, which aren't always the same, especially given the  
passage of time and all this brings.

I just thought this worth mentioning.

rs
sfls






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