A key rationale for drug prohibition is the belief that outlawing drugs makes them less available and more expensive, thereby shrinking consumption.

Decades of evidence, however, suggest this impact is modest, partly due to the “waterbed effect”: enforcement efforts aimed at shrinking the market mainly cause it to shift, in various ways, without much impact on its overall size. Just as pushing down on one part of a waterbed merely forces the water somewhere else, rather than reducing the overall quantity.

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The bar exam is intended to be a test of minimum competency. Yet those who administer it have, time and again, demonstrated a lack of the minimum competency required to do their jobs effectively. 

When I sat for and passed the Colorado Bar Exam in July 2019, like many test takers, I approached the entire ordeal with precise, systematic planning. Seven years later, most of the fine details have faded. I cannot recall the exact Denver venue where I spent two full days answering questions on subjects I haven’t thought about since. Nor can I explain the mechanics of committing abstract legal concepts to rote memory just to regurgitate them in the exact format examiners demanded. What remains vivid is the immense financial and logistical toll required simply to sit in that room.

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Yesterday, I published a critique of the Transportation Institute’s claim that foreign ships operating under the current Jones Act waiver are unsafe, noting that these ships have lower rates of deficiency findings in US Coast Guard inspections than the domestic Jones Act fleet. This prompted a rebuttal, the centerpiece of which is that international Port State Control (PSC) inspections—the basis for its claims that foreign ships are dangerous—and domestic US Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection (COI) exams aren’t comparable systems. 

That’s a fair point worth engaging honestly. It doesn’t, however, rescue the group’s original argument.

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As speculation swirls around the future of the Jones Act waiver and whether it will be renewed, pro-Jones Act groups are stepping up their attacks on the law’s suspension. This week, the Transportation Institute (TI), a pro-Jones Act advocacy organization recently caught using misleading numbers in another anti-waiver attack, argued that foreign vessels operating under the waiver pose a threat to American infrastructure. 

To justify the claim, TI produced a graphic showing that approximately 53 percent of movements under the waiver between March 17 and July 15 involved a ship found to have a deficiency under Port State Control (PSC), the inspection regime by which countries check visiting foreign vessels. Standing alone, that sounds alarming. But if there’s a “gotcha” here, it works in the other direction.

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President Trump has issued an executive order that requires the Smithsonian Institution to post 

new “temporary exhibits or signage” … outside the National Museum of American History (NMAH), “warning” visitors about “the Ideological Capture” of the museum.

The “ideological capture” is a reference to allegations that the White House made against leaders … in a blistering July 4 report[,] … accusing the museum and its leaders of presenting “a radical view of American history.”

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Last weekend, the tanker Paula Glory dropped anchor off Honolulu, having departed New Orleans four weeks earlier. Flagged in the Marshall Islands and riding low in the water—a sign of being fully laden—the vessel appears to be carrying fuel to Hawaii under the Jones Act waiver that took effect in March for energy and fertilizer products. If so, it will be the second foreign vessel to transport fuel to the Aloha State since March, further confirming the emergence of a domestic trade route with no precedent before the waiver.

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The proper delineation of authority between the federal government and the states has often been the subject of controversy in the debate over AI policy. Proponents of both approaches reference the constitutional clauses that support their claim. The reality is that this issue, as with many things in AI, is not a neat list of discrete policy matters. Instead, there is a clear mix of AI policy issues that require national attention—those that are the exclusive domain of the states and the issues that can be taken on by both the federal government and the states (or a collection of states). So how might a court or policymaker identify what level of governance is appropriate for different AI issues?

My paper, “The Obstruction Doctrine,” connects the jurisprudential dots that jointly establish a framework for evaluating whether a state’s exercise of power aligns with the letter and spirit of the Constitution. The first prong prevents states from inhibiting access to national markets. The second prong forecloses states from advancing laws that hinder the federal government’s ability to respond to issues that require national attention. And the third prong blocks states from interfering with national initiatives, such as extensive infrastructure projects.