Making the Grades

The New York Times reports that at least ten law schools have raised their grade curves in the last two years. The new rationale for this timeworn response is that students need a competitive edge in a tight job market and higher gpa, however contrived, is just the thing. Ironically, by outing the culprit law schools, the New York Times has probably reversed any advantage their students might have reaped from the sudden lift in gpas.

The premise that a law school can give its graduates the edge in the job market simply by raising their gpas across the board is offensive. Rank in class and rank of law school provide much more useful comparative data than gpa, so the premise that higher gpas, all other things equal, will translate into more job opportunities is dubious. Even assuming that raising the grade curve for all students yields a benefit among a segment of the market (gpa fetishists), the benefit to students at a particular school is at best a wash. Students with otherwise lackluster gpas benefit at the expense of the top of the class who find it increasingly difficult and pointless to distinguish themselves from their peers. If everybody is special as a matter of law school policy, why bother with the time consuming ritual of studying?

Raising the grade curve may make a law faculty feel compassionate in the short run. But all it really accomplishes is to make the faculty less relevant to the market as an evaluator of relative quality. Expert faculty differentiation among students (via competitively awarded grades) is a huge part of what makes a JD valuable. If the market doesn’t perceive any meaningful differentiation among students on the basis of the grades we assign, we’ll be out of business in the blink of an eye. At the very least, we won’t be worth our current salaries.

Two things remain true regardless of the winds of grade inflation. I’d hire someone with a C+ in Corporate Tax over another with an A in (fluff of your choice) any day of the week. And, all students want A’s until the day everybody gets them.

Law and Collective Responsibility

Tonight the PSU Law and Philosophy Society will meet to take up the question of collective responsibility for the current financial crisis. I regret I cannot attend the meeting set for 6:00 PM at Webster's Cafe on Allen Street. My role in collective responsibility for kids, dinner and laundry interfere with my freedom to sip coffee and talk about philosophical implications of just about anything.

If I could be there, I'd add to Plato's reflections, those of columnist George Will on the financial crisis appearing yesterday in the Washington Post and elsewhere. Will observes that "[w]e are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public."

The public, he notes, typically admonishes government to run its budget the way households supposedly do, matching expenses with income. This time, though, the public decided "it would be jolly fun to budget the way the government does, hitching outlays to appetites." This time, it is painfully clear that all of us not-so-secretly delight in deficit spending, both for our household budgets and for our collective big one.

The usual populist riposte to government action, to contrast the virtue of the people with the vice of some unpopular minority, falls flat. The rhetoric that would in the past elevate the wisdom and thrift of Main Street above the greed and excesses of Wall Street belies the new truth that the folks on Main Street have been just as greedy and excessive. They bought real estate on speculation with borrowed money for more than they could afford. They knew exactly what they were doing. Now their only pretense at preserving virtue is the last defense of scoundrels, the devil made us do it.

This time, we are all in it together, the collective and the individual. The proposed legislation snaking through the House of Representatives today marks what may be a new era in our understanding of justice, freedom and the scope of government relative to individuals.

Best wishes Law and Philosophy Society. May the wisdom of the ages be with you.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot

It's the ultimate alternative dispute resolution technique. Hands down.

Penn State Student, Derek Hines, knows it. He's won the right to represent Penn State University in the Rock Paper Scissors National Championship in Las Vegas, June 20-22. The winner will pick up $50,000 and will travel to Bejing for the inaugural International Rock Paper Scissors Federation Championship (IRPSF) to face Rock Paper Scissors champions from Canada, Guam, Hong Kong, Ireland and Malaysia. At stake is world Rock Paper Scissors domination.

If you thought Rock Paper Scissors was a game of chance, you just got snookered. Winning takes a calculating mind and a keen eye for cues about what your opponent will shoot. Players call it picking up on "tells"-- such as the way amateurs start to make the scissors shape a split second before the shoot, the premature tilt of the hand as a signal for paper, or the tell-tale wind up for rock. In an interview with Pennlive.com, Hines revealed that he likes to make use of the "double throw"-- using the same hand shape twice in a row. "This throws people off guard," he claims.

From a purely mathematical perspective, the optimal Rock Paper Scissors strategy is to play randomly. But this achieves equilibrium. Each player should win, lose, or draw an equal number of times. As litigators know, equilibrium is nothing like winning. It turns out that people stink at randomness, no matter how hard they try. Champion Rock Paper Scissors players (and good lawyers) know that people trying for randomness are actually quite predictable.

The trick to winning Rock Paper Scissors is to take one move away from your opponent. For example, if you can eliminate or reduce the possibility that your opponent will shoot rock you will play scissors. Scissors beats paper and stalemates scissors. The real game is in trying to manipulate your opponent to eliminate one of the moves, or successfully to predict which move your opponent will not make.

Rock, they say, is for rookies. Careful observers have noted that males, particularly slightly drunk ones, tend to lead with rock. Perhaps it has something to do with maleness. No matter. Play a rookie male with paper on the first throw and see how much you like winning. Of course if you are playing a non-rookie, you can be fairly sure he won't lead with rock (however much he might want to), because rock is for rookies. So, if you're squaring off with someone who knows the game, scissors is your move. Later in the game, try the double psych on a rookie. Tell your opponent what you are going to shoot. Your opponent will underestimate the odds that you will actually shoot what you said you would. He will not throw the move that beats the move you announced. You can eliminate that one and pick the winner/stalement throw against the other two options.

It all seems obvious after you think about it for a minute. But then, so does law.