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*Sept. 24: Seeing Truth from Another Side: Rodney King v. Stacey Koon

Charles Nesson

reading:

Cooper v. Aaron

The Little Rock Nine

The Battle of Little Rock fought by Louis Armstrong

John Doar's Civil Rights Division

Farnham Press Release

• Sept. 25: Group Process and Individual Participation

*Oct. 1: Create Your Avatar in Second Life and Consider What IT Means

Ken Stalter, Jonathan Krop

• Oct. 2: Group Process

Materials:

• http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic175039.files/Prosecutorial_Abuse/Chapter_1_Introduction.pdf
• http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic175039.files/Prosecutorial_Abuse/Chapter_7_Accountants.pdf

*Oct. 8-9: The Principle of Law and Prosecutorial Abuse of IT

with Harvey Silverglate, Matt Feinberg and Alex Whiting

The principle of law, in its most basic form, is that no one is above the law.

magna carta
Common Sense (1776) by Thomas Paine:

. . . the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other.

The most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps in due process grounded in a system of checks and balances among separated powers. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy.

A famous exposition of the principle in American law was drafted by John Adams for the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

— Massachusetts Constitution, Part The First, art. XXX (1780).

The last phrase, "to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men," has been quoted with approval by the U.S. Supreme Court and every state supreme court in the United States

gambling is not a crime and should not be prosecuted as one in the name of the law the concept is too vague its overbreadth rides beyond the rule of justice to religion

Voter Registration and the Path to the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Charles R. Nesson - William F. Weld Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
John Doar- Senior Counsel, Doar, Rieck, Kaley & Mack
Charles F. McDew- Founder, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
John Seigenthaler- Special Assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy

John Doar exemplifies a prosecutor in pursuit of law and justice.
The accomplishment of the lawyers he led is a triumph of law.

Compare the prosecutor who follows his or her executive command to go after gambling by prosecuting online poker. Where is the justice at the core?

What is gambling? Who gets to say?

Prosecutorial zeal to "get gambling" is abuse.

To be constitutional the law must be more discriminating and if the law then also its prosecution.

What is the specific offense of online poker? there is none

What is the specific offense of face to face poker? none but gambling and that is no offense

Quite the contrary, there is tremendous opportunity for law in the teaching and learning of the game.

Oct. 9: Group Process and Individual Participation

DOJ position on "Internet Gambling"
Massachusetts Attorney General's Advisory on Poker Tournaments

kathleen

The panel today was interesting. I enjoyed the interaction amongst the panelists and thought they were knowledgeable and articulate about the subject matter.

Substance: I thought at times that the panel veered to much toward the discussion of online poker in particular (which might have been the point of the discussion) rather than focusing more generally on prosecutorial discretion and the potential for abuse (or the existence of abuse).

Form: I didn't have a good idea of where the panel was going to lead, and felt as if the discussion might have benefited from a more clearly articulated structure. The make-up of the panel itself (with 2 defense attorneys and one prosecutor) made it seem as if Alex was being prosecuted at times. I thought he held his own, but the pro-defense slant was occasionally distracting rather than persuasive.

For the next panel, it might be interesting to have a moderator or some sort of pre-panel overview to guide both the audience and the panelists.

Overall, a thought-provoking discussion.

peter

Although I am not in your class, I enjoyed the opportunity to attend the discussion held this afternoon and will definitely be attending the next two in the series. As a law student and poker player, I find this whole topic area extremely interesting.

I also thought you might be interested in this article, which is especially pertinent in light of the topics covered today http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/article/9883/wsop-star-richard-lee-facing-online-gambling-charge. (Lee is being charged for creation of a sports betting website, but the logistics of the investigation relate to the questions you were asking today. On a related note, as far as I’m aware, no individuals have been charged simply for playing online poker.)

david

First of all, I want to say that the content of today's talk was fascinating. I think the speakers did a good job of highlighting the various perspectives on what is an interesting and relevant topic.

Some constructive feedback: I think the speakers seemed a bit unprepared to tackle the topic of poker as an example of Prosecutorial abuse. Although they handled it well, I think giving them background information on the current status of litigation as well as the statutory framework would have perhaps added more teeth to the positive commentary on the issues around poker. This could be addressed with future guests by "prepping them" before the talk or perhaps letting them know of the issues beforehand. I also liked the multimedia and felt it created a professional-feeling environment. I think mayne the audio on the table vs the audio on the mics was a bit out of balance, but that will show up in review.

Overall I enjoyed the talk a lot and feel like some good issues were raised. I am looking forward to the next set of speakers.

zander

you asked for a response on the panel discussion today on the level of character and on the level of content. on the level of character, i will offer my "gut" reaction: it seemed as though three of the participants were largely trying to pin down the one, with some squirming by the one. this often resulted, it seemed, in both parties taking more extreme positions than necessary.

now i will offer offer some thoughts on the content. what struck me was that during the section regarding civil vs. criminal cases, the prosecutor did not offer the obvious answer (except in passing): there is a normative difference between a civil and criminal offense, even as there is a difference between a fine and a fee, to borrow Sandel's terms. the prosecutor said that his concern was one of deterrent: without a criminal punishment, a company could come to regard indictment as merely the cost of doing business, a fine without social or personal implications. but this sort of deterrence-based thinking is oddly out-of-sync with modern notions of punishment. we punish criminals for their crimes, not to send a warning signal to others.

the distinction between a civil and criminal offense makes double sense if one conceives of a prosecutor as a crusader, someone genuinely convinced of the moral nature of a crime and offended by it. but that's not the case: as the prosecutor himself stated, his job is (was) often political. it is difficult to justify prosecuting in untested legal waters as a criminal case if the object really is to carry out someone else's political agenda, or to deter others from an uncertain crime, or even to produce a test case when one's own convictions are uncertain. that is the controversy, the contradiction, and the rub.

saied

I enjoyed the frank discussion between the 3 guests, especially the insights given by Prof. Whiting regarding the process of prosecution. My one concern is that the cameras may have prevented our visitors from being as frank as they would otherwise. I think Mr. Silverglate alluded to this when he jokingly declined to name his felonies for the day. At the same time, the cameras served a valuable function in preserving the knowledge for future viewers. I am unsure as to how to best balance the ability to preserve a discussion with the participants' desires for confidentiality - perhaps a commitment to restrict the audience of any recordings made, though this seems to be a crude measure. In any event, given that the cameras were rolling, the openness of the panelists was refreshing and eye-opening.

doug

Procedural:

I think the in general the procedure we followed worked quite well, though we will have to wait and see what kind of video it produced. Things seemed to run smoothly and being on video didn't seem to phase any of the participants. I think its easier to bullet point areas where I think we could improve:

• Attendance - This was a little disappointing, it would have been

better to have more people in the room. I think that a more active promotion of the next two lectures is needed with more of the class involved. Passively using emails to try and encourage people to attend did not seem to work.

• Microphone - I think before the next lectures we should work out a

procedure for getting the mic to people and make sure we all know how to turn it on - I didn't know how and am worried some of the questions from the floor will not be audible. This can be cleared up in the post-processing though.

• Audience Questions - I would have liked more of an opportunity to

talk with the speakers as I think there were several areas where they could have been pressed further or where the chance of follow up questions would have been good.

• Introductions - This might not crop up again as we're streaming

the next two lectures but it might be nice in future if we get the panel to do a straight to video camera introduction. This might allow us some more interesting cuts in introducing the lecture when it comes to editing.

Substance:

The most difficult task we face when editing the video is to make sure the debate doesn't come off as appearing to be fatalistic. I think we can definitely make a good case that online poker is the victim of an abuse of executive power and prosecutorial discretion but I wonder what impact this will have for anyone watching the film. We have two alternatives in approaching this problem: propose a remedy for abuse of prosecutorial power in general or propose a remedy for online poker in particular. I think these are two separate and distinct areas and should be treated as such.

If we were to take the first route more research would be needed and more material would need to be gathered as I think this was the weakest area of the debate. I wasn't at all convinced that a return to "common law based" criminality was an effective answer for several reasons. First, the common law has traditionally been both under and overinclusive in criminalising fraud in the UK and I see little reason to suppose it is different here. Indeed the Fraud Act 2006 makes a point of preserving the most controversial area of common law fraud in the UK precisely because it is so ill-defined that it catches everything the Act could possibly miss. Secondly, as Harvey argues himself, criminal statutes as rarely repealed and by the sounds of it a restatement of federal criminal law is likely to be a herculean task. Thirdly, I think the argument that brightline divisions on fraud or other white collar crime areas do invite creative work-arounds as Matt argued. I was more taken by the civil trials route but this wasn't really properly debated and the lack of threat of criminal prosecution makes obeying the law a financial decision which would be undesirable.

It would seem that given we have two more lectures we are far more likely to be able to propose a solution for online poker in particular. Given this I would suggest we edit in such away that we lead up to the question of what to do but the purposefully end on the question itself and use it as a lead into watching the next two debates. We could then produce these two debates as a follow up, thus giving structure to the three lectures in general. It might however be better to be able to make the case for online poker first, thus mixing in parts of next weeks lecture to this one. This would of course be very complex but it might not be beyond us.

jonathan

I greatly enjoyed the panel discussion. The topic is an interesting and uncertain one, and the panelists had some good insight.

As for changes, I would first consider giving the panelists more background before the discussion. It looked like they were caught off guard by the specifics of the discussion topic, and I think that allowing them to organize their thoughts beforehand would have been beneficial. Second, I would consider changing the makeup of the panel. Matt and Harvey served essentially the same role, although Matt was more moderate and less outspoken, so I would consider either adding another prosecutor or cutting one of the defense lawyers. Third, it seemed like the panelists were talking past each other on at least a couple of points. The most noticeable one to me was the debate about "vagueness." Harvey was making a good point that the laws are drafted so broadly that many seemingly non-criminal acts fit within them (he characterized this as "vague"). Alex kept responding more to the semantics (rather than the substance) of the argument by saying that, because people know that the statutes are broad and encompass a lot of acts, they are not "vague" (in a legal sense). Perhaps you as moderator could have been more active in getting the panelists to pin down some issues like this.

All in all it was a great discussion, though.

patrick

Great class yesterday! Really enjoyed the panel the speakers were all well-informed and interesting, and I think the discussion was both smooth and lively. As a cameraperson, I think I learned quite a bit and refined my technique for another go in the future.

If I had to pick out the one thing that most detracted from the presentation, I would say the temperature (it actually had me dozing off at one point I hope no one noticed!), though I don't think there was anything we could have done about it, and in all likelihood it won't be a persistent problem.

Regarding camerawork, I think the cameras we have are quite excellent easy for an amateur like myself to use and still produce a pretty good picture. In the future, however, I'd like to see some kind of coordination among the different cameras. This was especially clear to me during the question-and-answer portion of the session: both cameras usually tried to focus on whoever was talking, which meant a lot of going back and forth and a lot of missed footage. It would have been more efficient (and professional-looking) if each camera had focused on one of the interlocutors. Toward the end, I tried to focus on whomever the other camera wasn't filming, but I don't know how well this worked out. If the camera-people had some pre-determined filming guidelines (who would focus on whom when two people were talking, for example), we would end up with more and better footage. Another possibility is having someone whose job it is to coordinate the cameras a producer or something similar. This latter possibility would require a little more technology (some way of watching what the different cameras are filming, or at least some way of talking surreptitiously to the people working the cameras), but it would definitely lead to a much higher-quality finished product.

Hope these ideas are helpful see you in class!

sarah

I enjoyed the presentation very much. I thought that all the guests seemed extremely informed on their areas of expertise, although some did not seem as well informed on the specific topic of poker. I think that it added something to the discussion to have it focused at least to some extent on a specific area as opposed to trying to tackle the broader subject of prosecutorial abuse. I don't think that the presence of the cameras detracted at all from the discussion. It is my view that the speakers spoke frankly about all matters despite the presence of the cameras. I think that the speakers could have been more empathic concerning the other speakers points of view. It seemed at times as if they were each trying to get their own view point across as opposed to coming to a consensus. It also would have been interesting if there had been more discussion on how to solve the problem collectively. The lecture could have benefited from the addition of a few outside voices. Specifically, I think it would have been interesting to hear from some non legal voices whose expertise is more focused on the internet. I think think that adding some non legal people might make the discussion more palatable and accessible to persons outside the legal profession.

ryan

I found the former prosecutor's "fines as business expense" argument particularly uncompelling (Coase theorem; the government should be fining an amount roughly equal to the cost of the activity to the U.S. public - the creation of international externalities should not be regulated by U.S. law except as treaty obligations and other feedback mechanisms convert them into costs for the U.S.).

The guy with the 3 felonies article lost a lot of temporary credibility by refusing to name the three felonies. I'm not sure why he thought it was acceptable, after that, to keep referring to his article as if it had any weight as an authority. It's like someone refusing to show their hand in the showdown, but still claiming they win the pot.

I also thought that the bulk of the conversation was spent unproductively circling around the distinction between "abuse" and "discretion". Clearly, if the law proscribes more activity than can be prosecuted, then prosecutors must exercise discretion. Given a set of cases, a prosecutor must apply some rule to determine which ones to prosecute. Since that rule is not legislatively specified, it falls to the prosecutor to invent the rule. Due to political pressures, it's unlikely that prosecutors will use a completely random rule to select cases, and any other rule will systematically "abuse" a certain class of offender, by choosing it more often. As a check on that, we seem to have this notion that there is some level of "reasonableness" required of the prosecutor in selecting the rule. For example, racial profiling is not allowed. Vague statutes just blur one edge of the space of reasonable prosecution - the edge that separates prosecuting people for violations and prosecuting people for things that are not violations.

jihad

I really enjoyed the panel that was held during class yesterday. I thought the panelists each brought a different and necessary perspective to the discussion. On a couple occasions though it seemed as though it was three against one (the one being Alex). I felt Alex did a pretty good job defending the position of the federal prosecutors throughout the panel, though it was unclear to whether he actually believed most of the things he was advocating. I thought Harvey was particularly poignant, but I thought that the extreme position he took detracted from the very relevant point that broad federal legislation has led to arbitrary application of the laws under the control of federal prosecutors. In the end, I really did enjoy the panel and I thought it brought a lot towards my understanding of the discussion surrounding the emphasis placed on Online Poker in the past year. I look forward to dealing with this issue more in the future and watching the development of the issue on a national scale.

harvey

Comments are very interesting.

Ryan, the student who thought I lost credibility by not confessing, on videotape, to my three felonies of the day – this in the context of 40 years of fighting with the Dept of Justice and on the eve of publishing a book highly critical of the DOJ – needs a dose of real-world realism!

If you have any comments or critique of any chapter(s) of my book, please let me have them before the end of October, since my revisions to the manuscript are due at my editor’s desk sometime during the first week of November. So, the sooner I get your critique, the better.

P.S.: Please tell Ryan that I could easily name three arguable federal felonies I commit each day, and, if he gives me a description of his typical day, I’m sure I could do the same for him! The title is only a slight exaggeration, but not much.

ryan

Harvey, you plan to "confess" to your three felonies in a published work, so I don't really understand how that's better than doing it on videotape. Perhaps it's better because you get to put your felonies in context. Context, however, is exactly the issue here; my complaint was not that your work is of poor quality, but merely that it lacked the context that would have made it compelling. How are we to know the quality of your forthcoming work, without having read it, if we are not even to know its core argument?

Perhaps more important than the arguments for why we would *rationally* reject unpublished and unexplained work is the fact that, when you refused to name the felonies, it was disappointing. Certainly, you've created a cliff-hanger situation that may lead to more of us eventually reading your article, but you never gave us that payoff during the discussion.

So, while I think it's completely reasonable for you to refuse to reveal the felonies, I think audience members have a both rational and visceral reaction to that refusal that seriously impairs your ability to convincingly discuss the work.

*Oct. 15: Poker - a Game of Truth in Life and Law

with Crandell Addington and Howard Lederer, talking with Charles Nesson and Andrew Woods

reading: Poker as Life, Lee Robert Schreiber (Esquire, 2004), reviewed by Head Butler

david

Re questions: I think you or Andrew should field questions because seems we should try out the technical implementation of the "question tool" as a test run before trying it in class because of _'s law.

Re introduction: I think a minute or two opening "lecture" on how this talk is focused on highlighting the positive moral benefits of poker in the context of a larger attack on the game is a good idea. This will both: set the frame of the discussion for the participants as well as providing an introduction to viewers. This will be especially important if we get a turnout from those outside the class and for the web re-cast of the event. Re introductions: the benefits of your approach to having people introduce themselves seems legit for the stated reasons. I might add a word or two with Lederer as he is likely to understate his own celebrity which is a plus for his cred for viewers.

david

hi prof. nesson i think law school students are usually risk averse, and a reality TV show that showcases their lives screams of risk. however, it got me thinking about a reality movie idea i'd love to pursue, in which 5 or 6 of my friends or classmates would sit around a table, with whatever alcoholic or drug substances they want, and talk about life or philosophy or religion or lawschool/work, girls guys, whatever, once every couple months over the period of a decade. the conversations would be videotaped, and after 10 years of such videos, i think such a project would provide amazing insight into our own lives, and also showcase the way people evolve (mentally, physically, spiritually) over the course of a significant period of time. I happened to think audiences would also appreciate the film, and espevcially if the participants were HLS students, the conversations captured could really be inspiring. audiences will also gravitate to a specific person in the film, and as that person evolves in real time, the audience's connection will take dramatic turns. the only issue is finding the right group of people who are committed to such a long term project. dave

matt

"shinners@optonline.net" to nesson

show details Oct 16 Hey Professor, Just wanted to shoot you some ideas about the talk yesterday. I really liked the stories told by the two speakers and the passion with which they obviously felt towards the legal issues surrounding poker.

I want to expound a little on something that I felt Mr. Lederer started to touch on but didn't fully explore. I feel that the law defining what is legal gaming as 'a game where skill predominates over chance in determining the outcome of the game' has two key elements. The first is the word 'predominates', and I feel this is an important term. I don't think many would say that poker is not a game of skill, and I don't think many would argue that poker is not a game of chance. The argument would lie over which predominates. This leads me to what I believe is the actual battlefield of the debate, and that's the 'determining the outcome' part. I think the problem of the argument is the way that professionals and amateurs look at the game of poker. To a professional, the showdown is not really a part of the game. The showdown is an aberration where one player has made a mistake and gone in too hard. The game of poker, to a professional, is the betting, the pulling another player into a trap, and then making that player realize his mistake and getting out of the game. This is because most professional players aren't relying on hitting the flush on the river; they know that this is statistically unlikely and not a good bet. However, most of the people I play with and most of the games I'm in go to the showdown. There are, on most hands, two people (especially in a game with 6 or so at the table) who stay in and want to go for that off chance card, pulling for the inside straight or whatever. Most games I know (since I play rarely and at a very low skill level) have people folding early unless they have a good hand, and then they play to the end hoping for the best. When you see the game as almost always going to a showdown, it becomes a game predominantly determined by luck. Going to a showdown makes the game determined by luck; almost always ending in one player taking the pot by forcing everyone else to fold (while maximizing the pot for himself) is much more a game of skill. I don't think my first point (showdown makes luck dominate the game) can be particularly argued, especially to someone (like me) who plays on a very basic level. If there is a showdown, the game is determined by the cards that come up onto the table. That is the definition of luck.

I think in order to switch the viewpoint of the game is to educate people on the intricacies of the game and have them play in a situation where pots are won through eliminating all other players from the betting instead of through luck on the river. It's a hard job, since most people won't play at as high a level where the showdown becomes this aberration of the game. Showing it on TV is a good start, but even there, the most memorable moments are when the game goes to a showdown and someone pulls a card out of nowhere on the river to take the hand. This just reinforces the little voice in the back of most people's minds that convinces them luck predominates over skill.

Just my two cents,
Matt Shinners

*Oct. 16: LAW as Rhetorical Poker: Antigua v. USA in the WTO

with Joe Kelly, Simon Lester, Steven Donziger, Jonathan Cohen

Joe Kelly will play from the viewpoint of the American Gaming Industry.
Simon Lester will play from the international viewpoint of the WTO.
Steve Donziger will play from the perspective of little Antigua.
Jonathan Cohen will play from the perspective of the press.

NPR: WTO Weighs Online Gambling Dispute

Gambling Dispute with Tiny Country Puts U.S. in a Bind

United States — Measures Affecting the Cross-Border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services

Press Release, Brussels, September 26, 2007

Materials:

• Image:Dershowitz Brief.pdf
• Image:Consolidated Response to Dershowitz Brief.pdf

saied

recent cheating at absolutepoker.com: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21381022/

doug

The Democrats have introduced a House of Representatives bill that would require colleges to police copyright. The MPAA is rather pleased. Ironically the bill also stipulates that universities must provide alternatives to p2p such as blanket licensing in order to make good their responsibilities under the act. Penalty for non-compliance: cutting of federal student loans. http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleges-must-police-copyright%2C-or-else/2100-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=nefd.lede

*Nov. 6: Internet Responsibility: WE are the LAW

• Nov. 12: Projects and Opportunities

*Nov. 13: Projects and Opportunities

november 13, 2007 to the legislature and citizenry of the commonwealth of massachusetts

buried in governor patrick's brick and mortar casino bill is a provision criminalizing online poker, online gaming of all kinds, but online poker is my concern. i want to build a distance education environment grounded here at harvard using poker strategic thinking as the driving focal point. i believe that the strategy of poker is a subject of great potential interest to students learning how to think, how to understand the games that are being played around them, how to play, how to win.

i work with the department of corrections in jamaica in a prisoner rehabilitation program called SET which has started a prison radio station originating from the SET computer lab and recording studio, and is now ready to move to an island wide cable station featuring and teaching poker with distance education through the net and radio and cable tv.

i spoke this morning on Beverley Anderson-Manley's "Today" radio program originating in kingston, jamaica, with richard reese, commissioner of corrections in jamaica, and with kevin wallen, leader of SET about our plans to launch a distance education project grounded in kingston's prisons but extending island wide. win or lose you pay your dues: we are out to teach jamaica how to win.

my hypothesis is that math teachers would have an easier time after long division going to strategic games than to algebra. poker is the quintessential strategic game, fun and deeply involving, much more than algebra, which for too many has been the point of drop-out. i want to teach strategic thinking in cyberspace, which the net offers opportunity to do without imposing.

would you set the face of massachusetts against this experiment in learning? i would instead invite all interests to join the governor's casino initiative with online education.

hypocrisy unfolds

Lying at home in my bed I click away on my laptop, part of a ritual before bed, exercising my mind and engaging others. i play low stakes no-limit hold'em poker on pokerstars. my wife beside me does a cross-word puzzle. sometimes it gets better than that.Play a game of poker at one of Massachusetts' three anticipated new casinos, and you are a good citizen, helping to contribute an additional $200 million in revenue to the state. But try to play that same poker game online, from the comfort of your own home, because you enjoy it and feel yourself learning and earning and you could find yourself fined for up to $25,000 and jailed for up to two years. Got it?

Zander: Redraft

Buried in Governor Patrick's brick-and-mortar casino bill is a provision criminalizing online poker.

As many have commented, banning online poker while simultaneously licensing three new casinos is hypocrisy, plain and simple. Think about it this way. According to the bill, if you play a game of poker at one of these new casinos, you are a good citizen, helping to contribute an additional $600 - $900 million over ten years to the state. But try to play that same poker game online, from the comfort of your own home, because you enjoy it and feel yourself learning, and you could find yourself fined for up to $25,000 and jailed for up to two years.

This is not good law. But more importantly, it is not good policy. In barring online poker, the Governor's bill dilutes its most important feature: the recognition that some games can be beneficial to society as well as the state. Poker is one such game.

Poker is valuable because it teaches strategic thinking. It forces players to see and think from another’s point of view. From the perspective of law, it enables students to better understand truth and become more persuasive speakers. As a teacher of law for the past thirty years, I cannot tell you how priceless a skill this is, and how hard it is to teach.

But of course, strategic thinking is not limited to lawyers. For far too many students, algebra has been the point of drop-off in mathematical education. I strongly suspect that math teachers would have an easier time after long division going to strategic games, and then following up with algebra. Poker is the quintessential strategic game.

At Harvard, I am building a distance education environment using poker strategic thinking as the driving focal point. I want to teach strategic thinking in cyberspace, where there is opportunity without imposition. I believe that the strategy of poker is a subject of great potential interest to students learning how to think, how to understand the games that are being played around them, how to play, and how to win.

I invite all interests to join the Governor's casino initiative with online education.

neil

Since our last class, I spent some time looking more closely at your op-ed on the Massachusetts online gambling bill. You definitely lay out some interesting ideas regarding the educational value of poker and the inherent fallacy in lumping in poker with other forms of online gambling. As I mentioned in class, I am particularly intrigued by your desire to use poker to teach fundamental math concepts. I think this could have a huge impact in a lot of areas of economics/mathematics, including teaching mental math, net present value, probability, risk/reward tradeoffs, how to evaluate investments, etc. Given the current dismal state of math and science education in this country, we need innovations like these that can cultivate student interest in these fields. Fifty years ago it was the Russians winning the space race and launching Sputnik that scared the United States into doubling down its investment on math and science education and promoting mass participation in engineering, area studies and other critical fields for national security. Unfortunately, many of the engineers and other science professionals produced by that movement are nearing retirement age, but we cannot replace them fast enough. While India and China graduate mass quantities of engineers, American colleges give out more degrees in Sports Management than Engineering on an annual basis. There is a clear need to re-energize the populace behind math and science education and I think that using poker to spark student interest is a very promising concept.

My biggest suggestion for improving the piece going forward is that you need to work on the flow and logical structure of the ideas you express in the op-ed. Currently, the piece reads like too much like a collection of disparate ideas/arguments on behalf of poker; it seems to lack a broader organizing framework. I think you need to work on some of the transitions between the ideas, and think more about the optimal order in which to present them. I actually think Zander’s redraft of your original op-ed does this quite nicely—he managed to incorporate a lot of the ideas that you originally proposed while maintaining a clear structure and logical transitions between the points. He accomplishes this by doing the following:

1. Starts the op-ed with a “hook” that piques the reader’s interest (namely the “it’s okay to play at a casino, but not from my own bed” hypothetical)

2. Makes a clear statement of your position on the issue (this is bad law AND bad policy)

3. Articulates the underlying rationale behind this position (this is bad policy because it discounts the tremendous educational value that poker can have)

4. Provides concrete examples supporting the concept of poker as an educational tool (strategic thinking, math skills, etc)

5. Invokes the reader to join you in your attempt to leverage the educational value of poker by opposing this bill

One addition I would make to Zander’s piece: I’d love to see some more empirical data about what success you have had using poker as a teaching tool (if I remember correctly, there were some stats coming out of the Jamaica prison program—you should incorporate those if possible).

I hope these comments are helpful. I look forward to discussing it more in class today.

fern likes this better

I am eon, Dean of Cyberspace. In real space, I am Charles Nesson, Weld Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School and founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. My cause is open education in an open net.

I teach a course called “Evidence” about how "truth" is proved in a court of law, what this truth is and what are its limitations.

I use the Necker Cube as a metaphor for understanding the multi-storied nature of truth. The Necker Cube is a two dimensional object that we, observing it, conceptualize in our three-dimensional space in (at least) two different ways, and we cannot hold both views simultaneously. As a metaphor for truth this resonates Jerry Facher’s lesson taught in A Civil Action: “Truth lies at the bottom of a bottomless pit.” My students learn that evidence takes its meaning from context and observer. Meaning changes with context and viewpoint.

I challenge my students with the riddle of three hats, the solution of which requires imagining what your position looks like from another’s point of view. I teach them to play poker and to see in the game a language for thinking about and an environment for experiencing the dynamics of structured confrontation. We watch My Cousin Vinny in serialized ten-minute clips through the thirteen meetings of my class. Vinny is a great teacher. You can buy a t-shirt at the Harvard Coop that reads “Everything I know about Evidence I learned from Vinny.” Vinny teaches how to understand a legal story from two sides and how to find the tipping point to make you switch your point of view. Vinny has to be a poker player.

Poker is a game of two prime skills. First is the skill of recognizing and making good investments of your resources while avoiding making bad ones. Second is the skill of reading your opponent's strategy without revealing your own. These are useful skills for moving successfully not only at a poker table but as well in law, business and romance. We use Hershey kisses for chips.

My plan for this coming January when I next offer my class is to teach both live with students in my classroom and online in open media with students in a variety of distant venues. We will use the distance learning tools and techniques for communicating and aggregating thought that Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey and their students have developed at the Berkman Center, coupled with the presentation technology and practical experience of Michael Breyer’s company, Counsel Connect, to create a scalable distance learning environment in which message is distributed through all media with response back through internet.

Poker can be America’s best foot forward in the world. Quintessentially American, invented on Mississippi river boats, spread throughout the frontier, played by presidents, generals, soldiers, diplomats, bankers, lawyers, people of every variety, online poker lets the world play. Poker could offer a far more friendly and engaging American face to the globe in cyberspace than our bombs and guns and legalized torture.

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Charles Nesson has recently founded the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (gpsts.org) and advocates for online poker. For the riddle and much more, go to http://gpsts.org.

zander

I'm going to have to go with Fern on this one... (but thanks for the kind words, Neil!)

Nov. 19

doug

Nov. 26

patrick

The Digital Freedom Academic Advisory Board strongly condemns the Campus Based Digital Theft Prevention provision of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act. Inclusion of this language in a much-needed spending bill, upon which millions of college students and hundreds of universities depend, is reprehensible. It runs counter to the legislative process and the best interest of our national institutions of higher education and their students. Illegal downloading of copyrighted material should be discouraged and wherever possible curtailed, especially on commercial broadband networks where the bulk of such downloading occurs. However, this provision does not properly address the issue. Singling out universities and mandating that universities look into paying a predetermined fee to a limited set of select vendors, and thereby awarding certain corporations multiple-hundred-million dollar, no-bid contracts is premature, ill-judged, and cannot be an acceptable solution.

Students, universities, and working artists will be better served by a solution, legislative or not, that gives members of the university community, like everyone else, the ability to legally and easily access and download music and movies at the best possible price. Consumer choice, whether on campus or not, is the cornerstone of any successful strategy to combat illegal file-sharing. These programs must enable institutions and individuals to choose the service and provider. Forcing universities into limiting broadband access is a needlessly Draconian move, which threatens to undercut the university’s core learning mission.

The language and intent of the Campus Based Digital Theft Prevention provision limits consumer choice, and infringes on the jurisdiction of individual universities, What little it will do to combat illegal downloads comes at an unacceptable cost, which includes the crippling of competition, abrogation of consumer choice, undercutting of university mission, and needless cost of millions of dollars for taxpayers.

Nov. 27

Jihad

Zander

Saied

Dec. 3

DAL, Aman Solomon, Kathleen Gray, Neil Shah, Matt Shinners, Rochelle Lee, Naeun Rim, Brian Gross, Ryan Trinkle.

Dec. 4

Wrap

Projects

Jeremy Sigall http://harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7642134127&ref=share

Zander Li http://ucpartyfund.wordpress.com/

projects and critiques

jihad - aman's critique - kathleen's critique
aman - neil's critique
neil -

naeun - donotclick.org - patrick's critique
patrick - zander's critique - naeun's critique
zander - doug's critique

ruth - oral contraception