My Job

My Education

  • Harvard Law School
  • Harvard College
  • Duncan Kennedy
    Although I never took a course with him, Duncan Kennedy was the professor whose work influenced me the most as a law student and later as a junior faculty member. He continues to influence me; the value competition framework reexpresses his critical legal studies project of finding ideology within reason in utilitarian, efficiency-based terms.
  • Thomas Schelling
    I took a class on game theory with Professor Schelling the first semester of my freshman year, and continue to be inspired by his project of applying reason to human affairs.

Civic

  • First Church
    I'm a member and former president of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County in Orange, New Jersey.
  • Community Coalition
    Before joining the school board, I was a trustee and officer in the South Orange-Maplewood Community Coalition on Race.
  • School Board
    In 2006, I was elected to the board of the South Orange-Maplewood School District.

Contact

  • Email Address:

Biography

After getting tenure some years ago, I decided I would use it to write a book explaining how democratic politics works and doesn't work. I don't have a book yet, but I do have a research program that I want to share. Thus this blog, which is a combination of papers and paper outlines with semi-regular postings on successful and unsuccessful value competition in politics, business, ethics, law, culture, and the brain.

Interests

Figuring out how value competition realizes or fails to realize social welfare