Matthew G. Andersson is a science and technology professional, former CEO, and author. He has been featured in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the 2001 Pulitzer Prize report by the Chicago Tribune, and attended the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the upcoming book "Legally Blind” regarding ideological effects on law schools and the judiciary. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and the Connecticut General Assembly concerning higher education.
“Sheet music is a bunch of black marks; they have no significance. I play violin, but in order to play well you have to be much more than a violin player. There is an entire world that lives together with it, like the currents in the ocean.” – Ivry Gitlis As a 2022 year-end exercise, […]
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Our founding document was designed to maintain a wall between your private life and government. Modern law schools profit by tearing it down. “A free society is as much offended by the dictates of an intellectual oligarchy as by those of an autocrat.” – Patrick Arthur Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals “In the social domain, […]
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A Two-Part Essay on the University Law School in the American Legal System “The logic of the common law is really economics. The teaching of law could be simplified by exposing students to the clean and simple economic structure beneath the particolored garb of legal doctrine.” Richard A. Posner In Part 1 of this essay, […]
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A Two-Part Essay on the University Law School in the American Legal System “Darwinian theory applies to many other aspects besides the natural sciences: An institution must be understood by the way it developed as well. How did it arise and what have been the stages through which it has passed? Is there any justification for […]
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The legal industry, and the law academy in particular, are in a high state of contention concerning one of their most protected traditions: the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT. The American Bar Association (ABA) that regulates our law-school industry is thinking of doing away with it. This exam is among the most heavily weighted […]
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An alumnus remembers a university professor and how he demonstrated the promise of higher education. With so many problems plaguing higher education, I thought it would be healthy to recognize one example of the often unexpected ways in which the modern university brings people together. A long-time member of the University of Chicago faculty recently […]
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“Professors believe they should be free to express their opinions and free of penalties for themselves and their institutions. That is asking quite a lot. If we could decrease our entanglement in contemporary policy issues, whether by anonymity or self-discipline, we would not invite the often-correct suspicion that professional knowledge was being used for partisan […]
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“When economists find that they are unable to analyze what is happening in the real world, they invent an imaginary world which they are capable of handling.” Nobel law and economics scholar Ronald Coase, University of Chicago Law *** Two law professors from the University of Chicago and UCLA, respectively, recently wrote a fascinating essay […]
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Some Thoughts On the University of Chicago’s New Conservative Student Newspaper “In place of seeing a mature person as a source of rational discourse, we might see them as reacting appropriately to situations, in terms of disciplined perception. Today we have techniques of manipulation on a scale that would have made Callicles proud. If there […]
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In a previous MTC article, I discussed some of the challenges in the format and economics of modern American legal education. That format includes an elongated graduate program (three years) on top of a four-year undergraduate degree. I argued that the UK employs a better method through its three-year undergraduate LL.B (Bachelor of Laws) and […]
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For a model, we must turn to the U.K. “We learn how to behave as lawyers, soldiers, merchants, by being them. Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.” Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Frederick Pollock, April 1926 “As a man is said to have a right in his property, he may equally be said to […]
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