This essay, written for a symposium on the life and legacy of Charles Reich, explores how Reich came to be interested in the field of poverty law and, specifically, the constitutional rights of welfare recipients. The essay emphasizes the influence of two older women in Reich’s life: Justine Wise Polier, the famous New York City family court judge and the mother of one of Reich’s childhood friends, and Elizabeth Wickenden, a contemporary of Polier’s who was a prominent voice in social welfare policymaking and a confidante of high-level federal social welfare administrators. Together, Polier and Wickenden helped educate Reich about the facts on the ground, including potential constitutional violations, and encouraged him to write about these issues. Subsequently, they used their powerful networks to circulate Reich’s writings and amplify his arguments. This history showcases Reich’s deep connections to left-liberal reformers who came of age during the New Deal: although he famously critiqued some of their handiwork, he relied heavily on their ideas, expertise, and good will.
We argue that there is a stream in the Talmud that attributes the responsibility to one player alone in the case of a joint crime/joint tort, and even in dividing the credits for a joint Mitzvah. We used the game theory to investigate which incentives are provided by this approach, which games are created, which games are blocked, and to which results this approach leads. In this paper, we present some Talmudic games. Although in Jewish law, a sinner cannot be a witness, one Talmudic rabbi proposes a rule that, in the case of a joint crime, one of the criminals may testify against their friend (who is the other criminal), but the court will not recognize the self-incriminating part of the testimony. The testimony of the criminal will also neutralize the friend’s capacity to testify against the criminal since the friend will be considered a sinner after the initial testimony. We argue that this rule may lead to maximal deterrence. We also investigate other Talmudic rules that impose responsibility on (only) one partner in the case of a joint deed: the halachic rule, which imposes responsibility in the case of bribery on the taker only. Another Talmudic rule that imposes the responsibility on the last player and only on them in the case of a joint murder/tort/mitzvah that was performed sequentially, and the rule that imposes responsibility (only) on the agent and not on the sender. We also investigate the different rules about imposing responsibility on the partners who did not cover a pit. Surprisingly, there are rules that impose responsibility on only one partner, and we argue that this prevents a prisoner’s dilemma. This paper is a part of the developing field of the Talmud and Game Theory.
This essay is part of the special Touro Law Review issue that grew out of Touro Law School’s January 30, 2020, conference commemorating the life and legacy of Charles A. Reich (1928-2019). In this essay, I describe the influence on me of Professor Reich’s writings, beginning with his best-selling book The Greening of America, and then with contact that became one of my dear friendships. I comment on the juxtaposition of Charles revering Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles sometimes writing negatively about the New Deal. The explanation is, I think, that Charles’s criticisms of the New Deal were aimed much more at 1950s government, conformity, and stultification than they were at the 1930s and 1940s years of Roosevelt’s presidency. I know that it would have pleased Charles Reich that Touro’s conference remembering and paying tribute to him occurred, unwittingly, on his hero F.D.R.’s birthday. This Touro Law Review issue on Charles Reich includes, in addition to my essay, this superb content: an introduction by Rodger Citron, conference organizer and Reich biographer; Charles Reich’s final (or at least his latest) article, “Keeping Up: Walking With Justice Douglas”; essays and articles by Judge Guido Calabresi, Harold Hongju Koh, Felicia Kornbluh and Karen M. Tani, Sarah A. Seo, and Raymond H. Brescia; and concluding thoughts by Professor Citron.
In our highly polarized political environment, race and gender issues have come to pervade and then agitate our formerly staid academic world. Some of the literature is angry, much of it is self-righteous; a public letter already signed by 153 scholars, artists and social critics of all colors and soon to be published in Harper’s, underscores the latter point. Query: Is the race and gender talk genuine? More specifically, are white male professors responsible for the professed unhappiness of their minority women colleagues? If so, can such men be trusted to help defuse tensions? This essay specifically tests Professor Meera Deo's assertion that “implicit bias” in law schools is holding minority female (and to a lesser extent male) faculty back. It then considers her second and more provocative claim, that minority faculty can generally offer better training in “solving complex problems.” (“Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia.” (Stanford UP (2019)).Regarding the former claim, Deo’s explains that minority women are not hired according to fair standards, not welcomed when they are hired, and not fairly evaluated for promotion. In addition, she argues, minority women professors are abused by their students. Because Deo barely tries to substantiate the second claim, it is dealt with only briefly in this essay. The finding here is that the principal claim is not proven. Close analysis of its components, along with Deo’s own statistics, bears out that for all of society’s failures to establish full equality, our overwhelmingly liberal law faculties offer far more equitable treatment than Deo acknowledges. Deo is to be commended for dealing with an issue close to the heart of academic life today. In pitting race and gender groups against one another, however, Deo does unnecessary damage to our self-understanding and sense of well-being.
