Category Archives: Law
Law, Lawyers, and Other Fables
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th September 2024“No one is above the law” is a bit of thick BS that usually comes from the mouth or pen of a person of malign intent whose goal is to deprive others of their liberty or property. Unspoken is their self-exemption from the principle which seems to have no real use save as a cudgel….
› Read the full entry
On Education
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th June 2023That American education is bereft of meaning in all but the most cloistered areas of its purview is self-evident. Little Liam and Olivia not only don’t know the three Rs by the 6th grade, they likely don’t even know what they are. Many of them and their like will sail through on the SS Ignoble…
› Read the full entry
When Race Trumps Merit – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th May 2023Heather Mac Donald’s latest book is subtitled: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. It is such a tale of horrors that a number of alternate subtitles come to mind. Animal Farm Redux, How I Came to Love Big Brother, A Litany of Lunacy, 40 Years Before the Mast, Gone…
› Read the full entry
Noise – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th June 2021Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgement is a book by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, and Cass Sunstein. The noise that is their subject is not that of honking geese or backfiring motorcycles; it’s the unwanted variability in judgement or decision making when the facts behind the decision or judgement are the same. Noise and…
› Read the full entry
Logic and the Law
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th July 2010Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. He’s the author of a recent article in the New York Times which exemplifies a peculiar disaffinity between law and logic. In this article he professes a fondness for a positive vision of progressive jurisprudence. He…
› Read the full entry
Gibbon and the Law
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th June 2010Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794) is the greatest historian to write in English, and so far as I can tell in any language. His greatness rests on four pillars. His knowledge of his subject (the Roman world from antiquity to the fall of Constantinople in 1453) is more than encyclopedic; it’s beyond understanding. His use…
› Read the full entry
The Law and Lewis Carroll
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th December 2009Originally published in 1986, this piece describes a legal climate that has not changed in the intervening 23 years. It also appears on the Commentary page The advent of medical malpractice litigation as a growth industry has spawned many reactions. Physicians, not unexpectedly, respond with outrage. They adduce that most of the increase in malpractice…
› Read the full entry
Cocaine and Addiction
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st May 2009I chanced upon this article. Its subject is the advisability of legalizing marijuana. It’s at the usual level of coherence that typifies public discussion of the subject. It sees no conflict between an individual’s right to engage in behavior that harms only himself and society’s right to stop him, indeed to lock him up for…
› Read the full entry
Medicine Undefined
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th March 2008The purpose of medicine is twofold. First to prolong life, ie to prevent premature death from disease. The second is to relieve pain and suffering from disease. To many medical “experts” it also appears to include the alleviation of just about anything that can cause distress of any sort. War, murder, crime, and poverty are…
› Read the full entry
More on the Medical Establishment
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd January 2008In the January 3, 2008 issue of the world’s best and most important medical journal –The New England Journal of Medicine – Gregory D. Curfman, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D. discuss a case before the Supreme Court – Riegel v. Medtronic. The case involves whether state law and federal law conflict…
› Read the full entry
