Good news from Congress: A blow to seniority, and 2010

I read that 3 big committee chairmanships went to non-senior congressmen after challenges. I'm not sure if they're the most competent (in subject matter expertise or managerial expertise) to run the committees but at least it's evolving into something beyond blind seniority. There's disturbing signs that Waxman got his chairmanship simply by being close to the Speaker, as opposed to superior competency. I'll investigate further if I have the luxury to do so.

In 2010 republicans have the chance to do a 1994 and pick up some purple house seats occupied by vulnerable democrats. For technocrats, I think the real battle is the Republican primaries -we should get highly competent (think elite JD, MPA, such as local law and public policy professors) people to run in these Republican primaries.

Comments

[TGGP]

I think there are enough lawyers in D.C already.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

TGGP, that's a cute line, but I think it's ultimately Palinesque identity politics of the dumb. They make laws in D.C. I think part of the core competencies is to be literate about law.

Recently, it seems like one can't make it to the supreme court without a resume that could land one an elite law faculty position. I think that's a good thing. I'd like to see the same standards emerge for the presidency, the executive cabinet (with an added standard of domain competency to the position and the highest administrative competency), and for the large population state senate seats and governorships.

You're a bright guy, TGGP. I wish you were a little more self-critical about the myths you hold dear, as well as the intellectually lazy spots you loll in at times.

[TGGP]

I don't what "average folks" in there either, so I'd be fine with an IQ screen. Over half of Congress holds a law degree (though they are still ignorant about the legislation they enact), and I think the massive influence of lawyers over our laws has resulted in such a convuluted mass of legislation that the citizenry governed by it cannot understand it without the assistance of lawyers, and even then it's hardly clear. To quote an eminent Constitutional law scholar, lawyers take something not inherently mysterious and make it a mystery. I would like to have more people who are both intelligent and have experience on the receiving end of red-tape doing something productive.

I do hold to a variety of "producerism", and I don't think in aggregate lawyers qualify as producers. My view on this has been heavily influenced by Bruce Benson's Enterprise of Law so perhaps I should read more broadly. He gives the example of the medieval Law Merchant, which was created by and for merchants and worked well enough that people preferred it and voluntarily held by its decisions. He argues that professional lawyers didn't even make an appearance in criminal courts until kings began interfering with the system for their own benefit. I think if people had the option to use a different legal system they would jump at the chance, but it's too valuable a monopoly for the government give up.

Supposedly there are a lot fewer lawyers in Japan (fewer in the whole country than the city of D.C), I would guess their legal system is less complex.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

TGGP,
I guess I think you have a naive view of lawyers if you came about it honestly, or I think your view is warped by an emotional attachment to a libertarian narrative. I agree you should read more broadly about law. There's nothing magical about a legal education, it just builds expertise in understanding laws.

I do think legal education could be improved a lot, and the academy does seem to be self-improving, although not fast enough. Much stronger quantitative and economics skills should be attained prior to law school. Pre-law requirements should be similar to pre-econ ph.d. requirements, there should be med school style mandatory clinical rotations, and one should have masters in applied math/statistics level quantitative skills to attain the juris doctor (I think those same quant skills should be required for any science or social science graduate degree).

But in general, in writing about lawyers, I think you're writing from ignorance.

[TGGP]

It's tough to say whether we came by any of our beliefs honestly, but I think I had a low opinion of lawyers before I was a libertarian. The two are somewhat distinct. See a libertarian claim that in a free society there would be a lot more law and lawyers here, while a non-libertarian wrote a book about how neighbors can resolve their disputes without resorting to any body of law (either government-made or private/voluntary).

I think my negative attitude toward all things lawyery peaked when I was in Youth & Government as a mock-lawyer. It didn't have the same effect on my sister, who decided to become one when she didn't have any other idea what to do, though she also showed no interest when I sent her Volokh/Balkinization links and Benson's book.

From what I've heard, academic law journals are much less likely to have peer review and (in reverse of the normal practice) have students decide what's published while professors grade papers, which is how stuff like this slips through. Supposedly, the Harvard Law Review was of higher quality in the past though.

[TGGP]

This is what I was recalling with regard to law journals.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

"For technocrats, I think the real battle is the Republican primaries -we should get highly competent (think elite JD, MPA, such as local law and public policy professors) people to run in these Republican primaries."

It may be a long way from that to your sister. It seems to me your argument is that the science and standards of even elite legal scholarship is so bad, and the professional deformation is so great, that we're better off with mostly smart non-lawyers in high level legislative and administrative positions.

To be fair, that's an empirical question. My own observations don't match your perspective. I think training a first rate mind in administrative law, and forcing them to be literate on that topic, makes them a better administrative regulator. So I think the same smart person who could've been a computer science Ph.D. would be better as a freshman congressman (by technocratic standards -not necessarilly ideological) if he went to harvard law and graduate magna cum laude with an MPA from the kennedy school and legislative internships along the way, and writing a graduation dissertation on administrative law, than if he spent the same 4 years getting a ph.d. in computer science and worked in a comp sci lab.

But, it's an empirical question and should be empirically tested.

[TGGP]

I don't know if CS would be a good background for many Congresspeople. You might want a few just so somebody has some domain expertise when they have to legislate on that area. Because Congress can also tinker with stuff like tort reform, having people who practiced law would be a good idea as well, but I wouldn't want them to make up nearly as large a portion of Congress as now. Those with legal training would be more fit for courts.

Interestingly enough, the Kennedy School has provided very few of Obama's appointments despite having the purpose of training people in government.

But, it's an empirical question and should be empirically tested.
"Better" is normative, and with legislation I don't think you'd even have the same kind of weak standards of measurement our hypothetical CS guy would have in software. How would you empirically test it?

Since you're interested in pardons for reasons of transparency, I thought you might want to check out this diavlog between Jack Balkin and Eric Posner, which gets into trials and Truth Commissions for Bush admin officials. Balkin also views the worst result to be sweeping things under the rug, though he thinks trying officials may take too much effort Obama would prefer to spend in other places. Posner likes the forgive-and-forget way of doing things or "the Spanish model", as he calls it.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

1. TGGP, it's a distressingly small world, I've already watched that diavlog.

2. I didn't bother spelling it out, but I think there are functionally non-normative ways to use "better", when used in a type of (non-normatively) technocratic sense. Is it really normative to say that it's better to build a water transportation container without a high level of perforation? One can get in an abstract and niggling debate about this as in anything, but I think the idea still stands.

3. You talk about congressmen with phd's in comp sci for domain expertise. This ties in to a post I've been getting ready to write about that recent test demonstrating political/economic illiteracy of elected officials in the USA. I don't think we should focus on whether our elected officials know who wrote "of the people, by the people ..." or maybe even the difference between market and centrally planned economies. I think we should be focused on if they have the right decision heuristics, focused mainly on identification of and deference to domain experts. Comp sci Ph.D.'s can give guidance to legislators on comp sci, however, given that legislator (and administrators) MAKE LAW, I think the juris doctor is a little more central to the enterprise, as is the MPA (for administrators) or Ph.D. in public policy.

I think you have this stereotype of the personal injury lawyer chasing an ambulance. The ego of John Edwards notwithstanding, I agree these type lawyers don't have much more domain competency to being a congressman than does your typical comp sci professor. On the other hand, I think this is the type of intellectual path we want a future president to embark on:

http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/mfitts/

and this is the type of intellectual path that would make sense for a congressional representative:

http://www.law.columbia.edu/fac/Richard_Briffault

[TGGP]

You should make a post on your non-normative conception of better legislation. What is your empirical test?

[John Sabotta]

Better a vote fot Palin than a vote to be vivisected.