vanessabaird.bsky.social

Inefficiency and Inequity of the Law Review Submission System Chad M. Topaz1,2,3,* 1Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA 2University of Colorado–Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA 3QSIDE Institute, Williamstown, MA, USA *Corresponding author: cmt6@williams.edu Abstract Where a legal scholar works shapes publication outcomes nearly as much as what they write. In the law review submission system—the primary publication market for legal scholarship in the United States—student editors face thousands of submissions for a handful of slots and rely heavily on institutional prestige as a proxy for article quality. We build a calibrated agent- based simulation of this market and benchmark it against deferred acceptance, a centralized matching algorithm used in markets like medical residencies. The simulation predicts severe misallocation: more than 60% of top-tier placements differ from what centralized signal- based matching would produce, and the rank correlation between article quality and journal prestige is 0.45 versus 0.79 under centralized matching. Which system produces better placements overall depends on how many authors are competing for how many slots. As competition intensifies—a trend already underway—the current system’s disadvantage grows, with the model predicting up to 13.4% loss in match quality. Partial reforms like extending deadlines have negligible effects; in the simulation, the primary source of inefficiency is the decentralized structure of the market itself. The simulation also reveals that credential dependence produces inequity that persists even among articles of comparable quality: authors from prestigious institutions receive markedly better placements regardless of the matching mechanism. Centralized matching fixes the sorting problem but not this equity problem— prestige bias is embedded in editorial signals and would require changes to how articles are evaluated, not just how they are assigned.

This'll be my last post on this (unless/until publication) but the fruits of my rage are now "officially" posted on SoxArXiv and have been submitted for publication, yay!

"Inefficiency and inequity of the law review submission system"

Link: osf.io/preprints/so...

Evidentiary pragmatism. Exactly.

Too jaded to be fooled = tricked more easily.

But we do not train students to think critically in this way.

SO much easier to focus on the math and just follow path dependence: "train students the way I was trained" type laziness.

And I feel like many of the world's problems like climate change are caused by how stupidly we train students to think about causality, like "correlation is not causation."

yes it (sometimes) is.

And there is generally an underlying causal explanation for many correlations

Recently, I had reason to calculate the # of hours I spent allowing students to write infinite revisions in every class I taught - and then what it took to write down every single error in a data table of categorized errors.

It was 12k hours, which works out to 30 hours per week over 27 years.

I am still Associate because I have spent years identifying stats-causal inference blind spots in a data collection effort I started in 2003. Now working on web app to help students overcome the 225 blind spots I identified.

So, not about the $ for me.

By the way, I have a conflict of interest here because I am working on a "nature of science, stats, causal inference" textbook at the introductory level.

But I didn't want to ruin my career by writing a textbook.

All this is because stats education has been poor. Too mathematics focused. Until recently, causality is just ignored, so people are not trained to think about how to assess causality, given data.

#6 particularly important because this means that doctors were very good at differentiating true gender dysphoria from gender non-conforming kids. Evals of clinics show that only half of kids who come to gender clinics ever get put on blockers or hormones. More evidence for #3.

5. Smoking causes cancer is also based on "low-quality" evidence; "high-quality" evidence is impossible with trans studies. LOTS of low-quality evidence IS persuasive.
6. Mis-reading stats tables in articles about "regret" - denominator includes ANY kid brought to clinic who never were trans

3.The cause of increasing trans youth assumed to be a conspiracy by trans practionhers
(When likely cause of increased numbers more acceptance)
Conspiracy thinking is intensified when about "protecting children" (e.g., sports controversy also about protecting girls, so has gender paternalism)

The logical fallacies associated with anti-trans arguments lays bare how poorly we educate so-called educated in the logic of science. /n

1. Anecdote> data
2. Decision rule of do nothing given priority rather than calculating risk-benefit do(X) v. risk-benefit of not doing (X)

Suicides increased fivefold when adolescents on the waitlist were told they would be permanently waitlisted.

45 kids and untold relatives of these kids are now grieving.

And still they are like, but wait, we don't have enough evidence.

And being run by a drunk who is also drunk on his own power. Those kinds of drunkenness together would make anyone dumb.

We should make them talk directly to any of the parents of those murdered girls (or other relatives) directly like we made Germans near Dachau walk through the camp.

Interesting. This has always been a puzzle. Look forward to reading.

This is sad because I’ve seen the power of representation in the eyes of children.

The horrors that people fight to insist people endure is just terrible.

I’m so sorry.

What I don’t understand about felony murder is why they didn’t charge every Jan 6 protestor with the felony murders of police officers.

I misspoke above. I do understand why.

9. . AOC’s willingness to meet that hate with humor and resolve offered a reminder to Democrats that confidence, not caution, wins the argument, and that those who stand firm on their values have nothing to fear from bullies.

Understanding Ethnic Violence Cambridge Core - Russian and East European Government, Politics and Policy - Understanding Ethnic Violence

www.cambridge.org/core/books/u...

That’s exactly right. If you read Peterson’s book about ethnic violence in Eastern Europe, what enrages people is having been ruled by a lower caste member.

Because of this book, I predicted that political violence was going to erupt in the US during Trump’s term.

On the other hand, it might be that someone told Trump “dude” and then Trump asked Fox to use old footage.

What surprises me about this is that people in that world understand that it doesn’t always work to define what is morally good as “anything Trump does.”

Not that it matters if they just lie about it. But at least they know their viewers would find Trump’s actions shameful.

It’s simpler than this. Trump needed to bulldoze all of Obama’s accomplishments because of narcissism and racism.

Cannot acknowledge that a black man has any “merit.”

Sharks, then the Appalachian mountains, then fish.

I am legit wondering if some hawk told Trump to watch the movie Wag the Dog with the intent of manipulating Trump into attacking various countries to soak up all the headlines related to Epstein.

Trump is now pissed that Wag the Dog had no oil price warnings.

But, he has an opinion, which makes him an expert.

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Jasmine Crockett is the daughter of a pastor and is also very religious.

www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/tex...