"Judicial Activism"...

...is such a stupid concept.

If you think a law is constitutional and a judge says its unconstitutional, then you think that's "judicial activism". If he invalidates a law that you think is unconstitutional, it's obviously not judicial "activism" - he's just doing his damn job. In fact it MIGHT BE judicial activism if he consciously allows an unconstitutional law to stand.

If you think a judge generates new principles to force on society, he's similarly "legislating from the bench". However, if you thought those principles were already inherent in the Constitution, he's not "legislating from the bench", he's once again just doing his job.

So whenever anyone talks about judicial activism, they really are saying nothing whatsoever about the quality of the judge - they're simply drawing attention to the fact that they disagree with the judge on the Constitution, and they think the judge is wrong.

Why can't we just say "that judge is wrong"?

The same goes for originalism, by the way. I guess there might be some people out there who genuinely don't give a hoot about the Constitution, but most Americans who engage in intelligent conversation about this stuff want a constitutionally limited government and acknowledge the Constitution as the legitimate limiting document. "Originalism", therefore, is about as vaccuous a term as "judicial activism". Everyone is an "originalist". They just disagree on what that original perspective was. For some reason "judicial activism" is still actively used by either side (even though the term is completely plastic), while "originalism" has been pretty much monopolized by just one of the two sides that supports their view of the original intent of the Constitution. Two sides support originalism, in other words - only one regulalry uses the term or has it applied to them.

Kate and I have a contract!!!

We're closing May 10th - I'm very excited! Falls Church, Virginia, here we come!

I think the constitutional law scholar is aware that the real issues is constitutionality

Selective quotation is a funny thing. I hear a lot of people quoting Obama saying this "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," and then get their chuckles over the fact that Obama doesn't understand that democratic majorities have nothing to do with the court's decisions - that it's not unprecedented or extraordinary at all for the court to knock down majority decisions that violate the Constitution.

I see much fewer people quoting when he continues with this: "And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I'm pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step." The concern is not just the democratic majority - the whole concern is that the law is "duly constituted and passed"!!! The whole concern is that the Court would be striking down a constitutional law!!!

That isn't to say that Obama's statement was perfectly worded - after all, its NOT unprecedented for the court to invalidate a constitutional law either. But these "gotchas!" are getting really bad. Unfortunately, now that it looks like that national campaign has started I think we're only going to see more of this.

"They are unanimous in their hatred of me, and I welcome their hatred"

I just found out about this today

Incredible stuff. So tell me, why do the people who love to rewrite history so that our favorite presidents are turned into fascists not put the same effort into discussing the actual fascists that actually planned to overthrow a constitutionally bound, democratic, duly elected government?

Could it be that they really don't care as much about fascism as they protest they do, and they actually have other interests, goals, and priorities?

Go to William and Mary for excellent teaching

The Princeton Review released a list of the three hundred best professors in the country, and William and Mary did awesome - ten professors listed. That was more than any other school, with the exception of Mount Holyoke (14) and James Madison University (11). James Madison, of course, is also in Virginia - and it's where my sister will be graduating from this spring. Harvard and Yale had only two each (Mankiw was one of the two at Harvard), and Princeton only had one.

I had class with two of the ten W&M professors: Rowan Lockwood (geology), and Jim Whittenburg (history). I had Prof. Lockwood for her first semester there - it was a general education requirement, but I really enjoyed the class. I had Whittenburg for a great Virginia history seminar that met on Saturdays. We would start with a discussion in the Wren Building (the original college building, where Thomas Jefferson took classes - and also where Kate and I got married), and then we'd go on trips for the day to different historical sites in the state. Both deserve this honor very much.

In which I bring four blog strands together and clarify a point I think people often misunderstand

Strand 1: Steve Keen's accusation that New Keynesians practice Ptolemaic economics by adding epicycles to a bad base model.
Strand 2: Joe Salerno and Peter Klein bashing New Keynesians on price rigidity at the new Circle Bastiat blog.
Strand 3: The new NBER WP on price adjustments that has been cited by many people.
Strand 4: Jonathan's review of the first two chapters of the General Theory, which contrasts Keynes with the classical theory of unemployment.

My two cents: New Keynesians really don't care as much about price rigidities for the same reasons that classical economists care about them. New Keynesians care about price rigidities for different reasons than classical economists care about them. Sure, a price rigidity might mean that adjustment is borne by the quantity sold in partial equilibrium. That's true, and not only is it true - maybe it's even important! But people have known about that little wrinkle for a long time. The real significance for New Keynesianism is not a partial equilibrium point, it's that price rigidity results in an upward sloping aggregate supply curve. That's very different from how a lot of people talk about New Keynesianism and price rigidities, I think. Most people are very tied to the partial equilibrium point, but the real action is in the aggregate.

Some minor points on Keen/Krugman/Rowe kerfuffle

If you don't follow, don't worry about it (I barely do).

I did not follow this from the beginning and am trying to wade through it now, and honestly it's just a lot of fighting over modern macro models.

Two things I definitely disagree with Keen on:

1. He's making a fuss over how people are misinterpreting him, and a lot of it originates from his discussion of the "underlying principles" of DSGE models. Nick Rowe, Paul Krugman, and others jumped on Keen for an uninformed characterization of the underlying principles of DSGE, and then Keen gets REAL bent out of shape, as do his defenders. He subsequently protests that what he was talking about was New Classical macro! I'm sorry, Keen, but if you want people to understand you you've gotta spell it out better than that - and if they don't understand you you certainly shouldn't get mad at them. The "underlying principle" of DSGE models go way back to the 1920s, and have nothing whatsoever to do with New Classical macro. If you ask someone about how DSGE modeling approaches first started coalescing, they'd mention Ramsey and Solow, which came DECADES before New Classical macro. That's the natural interpretation of "underlying principles". If you mean New Classical, just say "New Classical" and don't blame Krugman or New Keynesians or DSGE for models that came out in the 70s and 80s.

2. Keen's "more Keynesian than Keynes" attitude is frustrating too, and he insists non-Post-Keynesian Keynesians call themselves "New Walrasians" because that's what the IS-LM model is. He's right about the IS-LM model, of course - and I take that as a compliment. Walras was a brilliant economist, and any decent modern economic theory owes Walras a lot. But that's beside the point of whether we're "Keynesian". Keynes and Hicks did disagree on the relevance of the loanable funds market to the determination of the interest rate. Many of us think Hicks had it right. But the model itself incorporates all of Keynes's own insights. This isn't really sufficient for saying we're not Keynesians. As far as I know, Keynes and Robinson never accepted the idea of mark-up pricing that Keen is famous for promoting in his theory of the firm. Robinson and Keynes preferred the New Keynesian interpretation of a departure of price from marginal cost as a result of market power. This was the whole point of Robinson's book on imperfect competition -a New Keynesians treatise ahead of its time! Should we banish Keen from the Keynesian paradigm for this? Probably not. He should extend the same courtesy to Krugman.

I may develop an appreciation of Keen yet... one of my courses this fall will be Macroeconomic Political Economy, which will have heavy doses of Post-Keynesianism. I'm looking forward to it. Nevertheless, this first foray into Keen leaves me less impressed with him than I know many of you wish I would be.

1940 Census "released"

"Released" is in quotes because of course searching for grandma is not what I'm interested in, and that's all the capability I can find right now. The National Archives website for the census is here, though. I don't see any note about it in my usual source for census microdata, the IPUMS. If anyone knows where to get 1940 microdata or if this is being released, could you let me know?

There's lots of great information on New Deal program participation that looks particularly interesting.

Call for panelists?

I didn't want to have to just make a blog appeal, but this is shaping up to be a busy week and I don't have any bites from the people I emailed asking so here it goes! If anyone has any research on market-based solutions to energy-related problems, I'm looking for another panelist for the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) conference in November in Baltimore, MD. I want to submit a panel on "Market Insights for Energy Policy". APPAM is a major public policy research conference that would look good on a CV. I would do all the hassle of submitting the proposal - there is a registration fee, but dealing with that would come later. Bob Murphy is tentatively interested in presenting his paper on Nordhaus, and I have a paper on petroleum engineering supply. I'm also going to approach Robert Nelson of U. Maryland to chair.

If you have any interest in this and have something that would even just be in draft form by November, let me know - I have to submit by Friday. If not, oh well.

While I'm on conferences, Southern Economic Association call for papers is due at the end of the month. It's in New Orleans, which is always fun, and for you Austrians there's always a group of Austrian economists that attend that. I plan on submitting my Georgia job creation tax credit analysis to that.