Weekly Top 5 Papers – October 18, 2013

1. A Brief Introduction to the Basics of Game Theory
by Matthew Jackson (Stanford University – Department of Economics)

2. Enduring Hierarchies in American Legal Education
by Olufunmilayo Arewa (University of California, Irvine School of Law) and Andrew P. Morriss (University of Alabama School of Law) and William D. Henderson (Indiana University Maurer School of Law)

This article is the first in a series on the empirical study of legal education and legal scholarship. Our initial motivation for beginning this project was to construct a ranking of law schools over time for use in our study of trends in legal scholarship. With Peter Hook, we are analyzing trends in legal scholarship subject matter since the 1930s. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those familiar with legal scholarship, a short methodological section for that paper turned into this article. We would like this paper and our future papers to be part of a broader dialogue about legal education and legal scholarship. We also believe that our database for the legal scholarship project and the categorization of law schools across time developed in this paper can serve as a basis for future empirical work on trends in legal education and legal scholarship.

3. Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms
by Kate Crawford (Microsoft Research) and Jason Schultz (New York University School of Law)

The paper came out of Kate’s research over the past several years into big data and the new challenges it poses. When looking at how big data operates, it became clear to us that current privacy regulations may not be adequate to protect us, either individually or collectively, from discrimination and disclosure of private information. As more and more public and private organizations invest in analytics, it is paramount that we understand the impact this could have on social equity and design frameworks for ensuring fairness when people are “judged” by such systems. -Jason M. Schultz

Additionally, this paper first developed as a conference paper at the excellent Privacy Law Scholars Conference earlier this year. We had fantastic input from leading scholars in the field, which really strengthened the paper.  -Kate Crawford

4. Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
by Dan M. Kahan (Yale University – Law School) and Ellen Peters (Ohio State University – Psychology Department) and Erica Cantrell Dawson (Cornell University) and Paul Slovic (Decision Research)

5. Populist Outrage, Reckless Empirics: A Review of Failing Law Schools
by Michael Simkovic (Seton Hall Law School Rutgers Business School Newark) and Frank McIntyre (New Brunswick)