This is probably the appropriate time of year to confess that (unlike some deranged souls) I hate doing my taxes-- not because the counting, figuring, or filing bothers me (on the contrary), but because the whole process fills me with sheer terror that there is some unknown rule or unclear definition (contained nowhere on the form) that will subject to me criminal and financial liability.

I suppose it says a great deal about me and my political leanings that this is the sort of thing that fills me with the greatest dread, but taking Anne Alstott's tax class has not allayed this, but rather made it worse. Just as I thought, there are huge vaguenesses, unexpected rules, et.al., none of which are obvious to the poor soul fighting his way through a 1040.

Only partially relatedly, I'll also mention that one of the things that makes Tax such a fascinating class is the way nearly every aspect of somebody's life eventually comes up for litigation in the tax court-- psychotic artists who take medication before flying, police officers deciding where to live, marriages, divorces, births, deaths. This is also, of course, what makes Tax extremely depressing, and confirms all of this libertarian's worst fears about the far-reaching grip of the regulatory state.

As is probably well known, the famous Chicago Chef Charlie Trotter recently committed to pulling foie gras from his menus, saying that visits to producing farms convinced him that the practice is cruel. His comments precipitated a firestorm, especially when it emerged that he had only recently allowed the fatty liver to be served at a dinner he hosted.

PG has recently weighed in on this debate, including a link to my previous thoughts on the matter. On the specific episode here, I support Trotter's point to the extent that he's doing something he believes in - an expensive restaurant doesn't need foie gras on the menu, and I much prefer his market based approach to California's preposterous law.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that in an alternate universe where I was a good enough cook to open a small, mid-level restaurant in the United States, I would not have foie gras on my menu. But not for any ethical reasons - as far as I'm concerned, animals exist for our amusement. The problem for me is that I think eating foie gras raised in California, or even outside its home provinces in France, is something of a cheat. Foie gras didn't just appear out of whole cloth, devised by some barbaric fiend intent on stuffing corn down duck's throats. Rather, it's an integral part of an entire region that for geographical reasons has necessarily always relied on goose fat rather than butter or oil. It should not be divorced from that context.

In other words, eating foie gras at an American restaurant is for me like flavoring a stew with wasabi. There are exceptions, of course - a very great chef might have something for which he thinks he needs foie gras, and he can afford to buy the real stuff, fresh, from Alsace. But otherwise, foie gras is often an over-priced, inappropriate intrusion into an otherwise coherent menu. Like all premium ingredients, it should be used with caution.

EDIT: I just wanted to add, before I get angry e-mails from animal lovers, that I do think wanton cruelty to animals is an excellent indicator of a generally cruel person. But when it comes to food, my sense is that we as people have free reign.

I managed to read this Todd Zywicki post twice before realizing that the blog he links to-- A Constrained Vision-- belongs to none other than one of my co-conspirators from the Koch program a few years back. She avoids using her last name, so I won't do so here, but here's (yet another) good post about Steven Levitt

Dan Markel asks some interesting questions in a post that hits on the SSRN tournament and questions whether law schools should subsidize blogging. On the topic of law schools subsidizing blogging, Professor Markel asks: "Is it possible that the blogs have already generated sufficient rewards to the bloggers in terms of name recognition (among law review editors and other profs, if not others)?"

While I have no institutional knowledge on the possibility of name recognition effects with other law profs, I thought I'd say a few words on the possible existence of such an effect with law review editors. A slightly rephrased form of this question might read: Can blogging help law professors with placement?

The key here seems to be name recognition. A lot of editors use a variety of heuristics to aid in sifting through the thousands of articles received each year. Examples may include school affiliation, publication history, and topic (i.e., sexy research areas like behavioral law and economics are likely to outperform topics like, say, tax). Another heuristic can be name recognition to the extent such a thing signals expertise--even if it's just perceived expertise--on a given topic.

How many editors would initially recognize, say, Eugene Volokh's name in the absence of his blog? How many would now? My sense is that many more editors--probably most at the top 50 or so schools--would recognize his name now. But does this tell us anything interesting? Professor Volokh placed quite well without the help of blogging, and certainly didn’t need blogging to continue placing well. And the same is true for people like Stephen Bainbridge and Larry Solum.

While it's difficult to casually isolate any real effect, I can't help but think there's something to the notion that the name recognition blogging provides these scholars (and others) helps at least initially with law review editors. Editors know something more about the scholar--have, perhaps, a more concrete sense of the individual's expertise--than would be provided simply by relying on the other heuristics I mentioned earlier. And there is something appealing about publishing a name that is widely known, not just within the scholar’s field of expertise but more generally across the legal community.

But, again, the real question here isn't whether blogging helps with name recognition among editors; it's whether it helps with placement. Ultimately, this question is very difficult to answer. As mentioned, this is partly due to the fact that most bloggers who would benefit from enhanced name recognition have a history of placing well and tend to write the sort of quality pieces that would place high anyway. One possibility is that positive name recognition effects lead to more offers. If this is so, placement might improve at the margin as a result of having more time to work the process.

I stress that these are just some initial thoughts on a very interesting subject. It would be good to here from other editors and law professors who blog.

Update: Professor Jon Klick (FSU) weighs in with some thoughts in a message posted at PrawfsBlawg.

Update II: Professor Solum offers an interesting story here.