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Books Received, 4-09-2008

By Jack M. Balkin

Publishers occasionally send me copies (or galley versions) of new books. I can't review them all, but I thought I might start offering a few words about some of the more interesting ones that come across my desk.

I've already blogged about Steve Teles's excellent new book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, and Steve is guest blogging on what his book means for constitutional theory. I'll have more to say about this later on.

My old friend Einer Elhauge has published a big theoretical book on statutory interpretation, Statutory Default Rules: How To Interpret Unclear Legislation, which argues that courts should try to interpret statutes to "maximize the satisfaction of enactable political preferences" which he defines as "the political preferences of the polity that are shared among enough elected officials that they could and would be enacted into law if the issue were on the legislative agenda."

Michael Abramowicz has published Predictocracy: Market Mechanisms for Public and Private Decision Making with Yale Press. As the title implies, he's interested in how prediction markets work and could be extended to new situations.

Finally, R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall's Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy assesses the risks and benefits of electronic voting, analyzes empirical data on voting machines, and offers policy recommendations about how to make e-voting work.

Full post as published by Balkinization on April 09, 2008 (boomark / email).