The Law Clerkship Tournament : The Expanded Edition [Repost from 8/3]

 Clerkships

Our multipart series on the clerkship tournament continues above with an expanded edition of our underlying dataset.  It is important to note that we do not threshold for the number of graduates per school. Specifically, we do not just divide by the number graduates per school because we do not have any particular theoretic reason to believe that placements linearly scale to differences in size of graduating classes. In other words, given we do not know the proper functional form — we just offer the raw data for your consideration. For those interested in other posts, please click here for the law clerks tag. 

In the previous circuit/district post, we focused upon the “top” 15 schools as ranked by an older version of US News.  When we expand the analysis to consider a wider slice of institutions, two schools standout — Texas and Notre Dame.  Basically, the arbitrariness of the prior cut off we imposed did not really do justice to these institutions … this wider view provides a deeper indication of their standing relative to other institutions.  

The Dynamics of Deterrence – New Article in PNAS

PNAS 08.25.09

The latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) features The Dynamics of Deterrence by Mark Kleiman & Beau Kilmer.  Here is the abstract:  “Because punishment is scarce, costly, and painful, optimal enforcement strategies will minimize the amount of actual punishment required to effectuate deterrence. If potential offenders are sufficiently deterrable, increasing the conditional probability of punishment (given violation) can reduce the amount of punishment actually inflicted, by “tipping” a situation from its high-violation equilibrium to its low-violation equilibrium. Compared to random or “equal opportunity” enforcement, dynamically concentrated sanctions can reduce the punishment level necessary to tip the system, especially if preceded by warnings. Game theory and some simple and robust Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate these results, which, in addition to their potential for reducing crime and incarceration, may have implications for both management and regulation.”