John F. Pfaff’s Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform is probably the best book on so-called mass incarceration to date. Its great strength is that it is empirically grounded. Pfaff, a professor of law at Fordham, doesn’t cherry-pick data to support some a priori theory, he grapples with the hard realities that the data present. As he well understands, this makes his argument for reducing imprisonment a very tough sell.
In 1944, the Hungarian moral and political philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973) wrote an essay that is indispensable reading for anyone wishing to understand today’s culture. Whether you are pondering the Left/Right split in our politics, the riddle that is Pope Francis, or the peculiar character of Western civilization and its ability to forestall its latest enemies, Kolnai’s “The Humanitarian Versus the Religious Attitude”[1] will help.
Arbitration has obviously been in the news lately with the Court recently upholding in America Express v. Italian Colors that arbitration clause class action waivers are enforceable despite the high costs of bringing an individual claim in many instances. In our Books section this week, Jim Chen's essay "Arbitration as an Article of Constitutional Faith" reviews Peter Rutledge's Arbitration and the Constitution. Chen focuses on the tension between the procedural rights of the Constitution and arbitration itself. David Henderson at Econ Lib provides an interesting review of prison sentencing reform in unlikely places. Roundup of Windsor analysis: Randy Barnett, Sandy Levinson, Michael…
