Volume 36, Issue 1

The Congressional Budget Office and the Demand for Pseudoscience

Arnold Kling

Politicians and journalists who participate in the policymaking process fail to appreciate the limitations of the analytical models used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The demand for pseudoscience leads to unwise policy choices. Although the CBO is nonpartisan, the presentation of its model results serves to focus attention on scenarios that are favorable to intervention and to deficit spending. But the policy discussion does not include scenarios in which intervention fails to accomplish intended results or where economic shocks make a large government debt problematic. This Essay recommends ways for Congress to redirect the CBO, resulting in analysis and reporting that would provide better support for public policy.

Cricket Soup: A Critical Examination of the Regulation of Insects as Food

Marie C. Boyd

Entomophagy—the practice of eating insects—has the potential to help meet the demand for human food and address food insecurities in an environmentally sustainable manner. The realization of the potential of insects as food, however, is not without its challenges. These challenges include the lack of regulation specifically addressing insects as food and the stigma towards the use of insects as food.

Bureaucratic Agency: Administering the Transformation of LGBT Rights

Marie-Amélie George

In the 1940s and 1950s, the administrative state served as a powerful engine of discrimination against homosexuals, with agency officials routinely implementing anti-gay policies that reinforced gays’ and lesbians’ subordinate social and legal status. By the mid-1980s, however, many bureaucrats had become incidental allies, subverting statutory bans on gay and lesbian foster and adoptive parenting and promoting gay-inclusive curricula in public schools. This Article asks how and why this shift happened, finding the answer not in legal doctrine or legislative enactments, but in scientific developments that influenced the decisions of social workers and other bureaucrats working in the administrative state. This phenomenon continues today, with educators resisting laws that limit transgender students’ bathroom access.

Share, Own, Access

Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Millennials are losing interest in ownership. They prefer to access property as needed on a casual, short-term basis. Prompted by the sharing economy, online platforms, and ethical consumerism, access presents a radical alternative to established property forms. This type of property use is popular among younger, technology-savvy generations. It prioritizes use, flexibility, and mobility over the control, stability, and attachment that are associated with traditional property forms. Despite its recent prominence, access has remained surprisingly undertheorized, especially from a property perspective. This Article fleshes out the normative values and the concerns ingrained in this emerging property form. In addition, it critically evaluates the legal and regulatory response to access. It argues that the law continues to steer users towards ownership or other forms of long-term possession, significantly limiting the option of access. Accordingly, it calls for reevaluating insurance, tax, zoning, and antidiscrimination laws. 

Shifting the Scope: How Taking School Demographics Into Account in College Admissions Could Reduce K-12 Segregation Nationwide

Thomas Scott-Railton

Deepening racial and socioeconomic segregation is producing unequal educational outcomes at the K-12 level, outcomes that are then reproduced in higher education. This is particularly true as rising competition among colleges has led many of them to focus increasingly on measures of merit that correlate with income and as parents and students adjust their behavior in light of those metrics. While existing affirmative action programs at colleges provide some counterweight to this dynamic, they are limited by institutional (and constitutional) constraints. Out of concern for revenue and rankings, many colleges are constrained in the number of students from low-income backgrounds they are willing to admit. Such a limited scope is not inevitable, however.