Jonathan H. Adler
banner
jadler1969.bsky.social
Jonathan H. Adler
@jadler1969.bsky.social

Father, Husband, W&M LawProf, guy with opinions; @chkbal co-founder;
@volokhc.bsky.social contributor;
Law before policy before politics;
Philly sports always;
'the cowbell of Twitter'-N. Schulz
typos are part of the brand. .. more

Jonathan H. Adler is a conservative American legal commentator and law professor at William & Mary Law School. He has been recognized as one of the most cited professors in the field of environmental law. His research is also credited with inspiring litigation that challenged the Obama Administration's implementation of the Affordable Care Act, resulting in the Supreme Court's decision in King v. Burwell. .. more

Economics 28%
Law 23%

Just when you think RFK cant be any worse . . .

Reposted by Jonathan H. Adler

The wildfire disaster caused billions in losses, and many homeowners are still waiting for insurance payouts and permits to rebuild. on.wsj.com/3Z2Xs84
A Year After Fires, L.A.’s Rocky Recovery Is Shaped by Wealth, Insurance and Red Tape
The wildfire disaster caused billions in losses, and many homeowners are still waiting for insurance payouts and permits to rebuild.
on.wsj.com

As always, it's compared to what.

Pretty close

I'm a big fan.

Because collective forms of decision-making can never reveal and actualize preferences?

You're attributing to me positions I have not taken in this context.

No.

About that NYT story on SCOTUS favoring the rich

I've learned quite a bot from legal scholars (incl. Some you mention), as well as from working on tribal cases, from seminars and empirical working these subjects, and time in and around reservations. Again, my focus is on institutional arrangements, not selecting particular voices.

It's not about anointing one set of perspectives but rather aspiring toward a set of institutional arrangements that will allow the relevant preferences to be revealed actualized in practice.

Yeah, the problem here is deeper though. Even on its own terms, this study is a mess.
reason.com/volokh/2026/...
Does the Supreme Court Favor the Rich?
Today's New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court's decisions are…
reason.com

More like: "I want you to have the autonomy and ability to pursue your own interest as you conceive of it."

I am very much so interested. I don't presume that public law scholars in the field are necessarily representative of such perspectives, or that the trust relationship s a good means of empowering or operationalizing those perspectives.

If you know my work, whether it aligns with the extant consensus in a field has never been a driving factor.

Well, that's part of the explanation.

That's probably the best way to do it, but either would likely be an improvement over the status quo. (PERC used to do a bunch of empirical work tjat bears on these questions.)

And how do you propose to make that happen?

I agree Calabresi should not have overlooked tribal lands, but they account for less than 10 percent of federal lands, so I dont think it affects his larger point. Federal land management has not been a good thing. Nor jas the trust relationship, in practice.

I think the trust relationship has been disastrous. I think giving tribal land back to tribes, for real, and letting them determine how to apportion, allocate, manage, etc would be an improvement, but obviously the details matter.

Individual title is not the only form property rights can take.

Of course such agendas could be aligned, but that's precisely why the details matter

Yes. I'm also familiar with many of the disastrous consequences of trust management

Okay, but the trust relationship actually constraints that, ans has been the source of (at best) paternalistic constraints for decades. Wouldn't recognizing it as actually their land be better?

How is recognizing the historic claims to those land in the form of property rights ignoring anyone?

You think that would be bad?

That accounts for less than 10% of federal land holdings, right?
(And of it were up to me I'd end the trusts and give tribes actual property rights.)

The treatment of counterfactuals shows how sloppy the project was. The coding is also problematic. Pro rich and pro-business also aren't the same thing. And as for the pro-business thing,
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com