Judge Guido Calabresi : The Future of Law and Economics [60:38-65:39]

Write a statute doing that, or criticize why that is wrong, why that is not the way to do it, and do that. I got many wonderful answers, as you can expect from first-year students, but think about it. Think about the fact that something like torts would not prohibit anybody from owning guns. On the other hand, if it made people liable, they might just find ways of making guns be used only by people who are safe. You might have a gun that could only be used by somebody who did not have a criminal background. I'd leave it up to the industry to figure out the ways within centers. Now, would you do it from tort law, as it is today, probably not, even in theory, because tort law is so inefficient? I mean, there are so many administrative costs, but think about a way in which one could allocate for costs of guns in the same way we very not effectively, but to some extent allocate the costs of cars, and you might come up with good ideas. You know, it's interesting. We have no cars which have spikes on the front, which impale people. It's surprising. I'm sure that there'd be lots of people who'd like to do that, to be very interesting to have a car that did that, but the insurance cost to them of a car that sort would be wild. No insurance company would ensure you, unless you were willing to pay a huge amount. So it's out. The market worked in a wonderful way. It would be kind of interesting to think about, and I'm not saying that one should do it, because the market doesn't dominate us politically, but kind of interesting to think of what the market would do about gun safety, were it allowed to operate? I'm going to use my prerogative as a moderator and substitute for Jeff by going over. I'm going to use that power for good today, and so this may be my last time as well. But I want to ask a couple more questions, while I've got you. You'd mentioned earlier, and the judges followed law. Of course, I think almost everybody would agree with that. Does that make being a Supreme Court justice harder or easier, given the nature of the Constitution? Well, tell me again, so you'd suggest the judges follow the law. When we get to a case that didn't hear that, it suggested what? It suggested earlier that judges follow the law. Well, of course, being a Supreme Court justice, you have much, much more room, because you do have a Constitution and have to follow a Constitution, but what the Constitution says gives you much more room. A judge on my court is bound by the Supreme Court, and they bound us. And they very rarely take our cases, so that most of the time we know we are of a court of last resort, and we write differently when we know it's a case they will take, we write much more broadly, given much more of a menu, hoping to help them, and when instead we're of a court of last resort, we're much more likely to say this is the way it is, because that has courts of last resort we are bound by what they say. They're also bound by previous decisions of our court, so that we have much less room. The Supreme Court is not bound by its previous decisions, and it reads the Constitution in very different ways as it wishes, so that it can do much, much more. It is still a court, though, and still is bound in some ways by the law. Two stories on this. When I was Dean reaching the end of my dean's shift, Connecticut's governor, who had been a classmate of mine in college, Lowell Wiker, suggested that I might be Chief Justice of Connecticut. I said no, because Connecticut had a retirement age of 70. I thought that would be much more fun, much more interesting.