Faculty News

Julie Rose interviews W. Kip Viscusi about balancing the economic toll of sheltering in place with the risk of more coronavirus cases if businesses reopen in this April 8 podcast. Read More

Their column, "Let's Pay the Stimulus in Digital Dollars," touts the advantages of a "digital dollar" in allowing for faster distribution of stimulus funds, supporting social distancing, reducing the cost of distributing funds to recipients, and eliminating check-cashing costs and other fees for recipients who don't have bank accounts. Read More

In a discussion with Planet Money hosts Sarah Gonzalez and Kenny Malone, Professor Viscusi applies his research on the value of reducing risks to life to two pressing questions: "Is it worth it to shut down the economy to save lives?" Or "Should we let people die to save the economy?" He talks about how he came up with a value for a human life and how that value could inform decisions about when to reopen the economy. Viscusi co-directs the Ph.D. in Law and Economics program. Read More

Sitaraman and co-authors Julius Krein and E. Glen Weyl propose the formation of a Pandemic Testing Board tasked with scaling up production, coordination and deployment of COVID-19 tests. The board's mission would be to increase the supply of tests and to launch a Pandemic Response Corps of civilians trained to administer them. Read More

John Hasnas, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics, touts The Conservative Case for Class Actions as "a well-constructed, informative, and clearly expressed argument for the value of class action lawsuits." In his review, published in Regulation, Hasnas says Fitzpatrick's book "should appeal to thoughtful readers regardless of prior ideological commitments." Read More

In a coauthored opinion piece published by The American Prospect, Ganesh Sitaraman and co-author Lev Menand look back at policy choices made during the economic crisis of 2008 to provide insights for navigating the current economic emergency. By examining what worked and what didn’t in response to the 2008 crisis, they suggest, we can reprise successful strategies while avoiding pitfalls. Sitaraman is the author of The Great Democracy, and Menand, an academic fellow and lecturer at Columbia Law School, served as a senior advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 2015-16. Read More

Professor Sitaraman’s research addresses issues in constitutional, administrative and foreign relations law. His most recent book is The Great Democracy (Basic, 2019). Read More

Rossi and Serkin were honored for their Cornell Law Review article, “Energy Exactions,” in which they propose that cities use exactions to hold developers accountable for their impacts on the electrical system. The Morrison Prize is a peer-reviewed honor bestowed through the Law and Sustainability Program at Arizona State University. Read More

Blumstein discusses "The Current Constitutional Challenge to the Affordable Care Act" in a Feb. 21 "Insights" column published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association Network. He is the University Professor of Constitutional Law and Health Law and Policy at Vanderbilt University, where he directs the Vanderbilt Health Policy Center. Read More

Ganesh Sitaraman’s work as a longtime advisor to presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and a friend of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is the subject of a New York Times profile by Emma Goldberg, “A Scholar of Democracy Gets a 2020 Lab for His Ideas.” Sitaraman is a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and the author of a new book, The Great Democracy. Morgan Ricks, a colleague on the VLS faculty, is quoted describing Sitaraman as a “structural thinker.” Read More