A few people have already started asking whether the dissolution of Reedy Creek violates the Contract Clause, so I figured I’d lay out the issues for people. (1/21). It's an interesting question involving a wild story!

news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-a… Buckle up, as explaining requires a tour through “Big MAC" bonds, “corporate suicides” and a threat by President Ulysses S. Grant to send federal troops to Iowa in the 1870s..

I have a new paper out, “Exclusionary Zoning’s Confused Defenders,” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…. The piece reviews articles by some prominent legal academic critics of zoning reform and finds their arguments…. wanting (1/11) Economists, legal scholars and nat'l politicians have developed a broad agreement that over the last 40 years, land use policy in our richest regions has become too strict, and that state governments ought to intervene to reduce local governments’ exclusionary practices.

🚨🚨 New Pod!! 🚨🚨 To celebrate the release of @samuelmoyn’s new book, Humane, the first episode of the brand-spanking new season of Digging a Hole starts off with a real smash. The great @JohnFabianWitt joins us a co-host while we put Sam in the hot seat podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dig… We learn about Sam’s views about late Tolstoy, why the first ever Nobel Peace Prize winner was overrated, the relationship between the laws of war and forever wars, and the case against enjoying oven-roasted trout in New Canaan, CT

Ugh, this @davidfrum piece comes somewhat close to understanding municipal bankruptcy (and thus state bankruptcy) but then screws it up pretty dramatically. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… A few notes for the curious…. Frum rightly notes that states can default without bankruptcy. They’ve done so often in American history, 2 big waves in the 1840s and post-reconstruction. Arkansas has defaulted 3 times, in fact, in the 1840s, 1870s and 1933, the Argentina of America