Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

This semester, I am teaching a Law and Economics Seminar at South Texas College of Law in Houston. I teach this course almost every year, and in recent years I added a course module, about halfway through the course, on behavioral economics and law. I assign several videos by Daniel Kahneman an other researchers about ways in which human "rationality" breaks down. This semester, I decided I should add an introduction to Nudge, which was a bestselling book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and eventually became a management paradigm and a cultural trope. I recorded a video overview that I can add to my YouTube channel and use as part of the course module playlist in the future.     When we make big life decisions—like saving for retirement or deciding what to do with our earthly remains—most of us try to weigh costs, benefits, and our deepest personal values. But what if the most important decisions of your life were actually made by a bored HR staffer who simply chose whi...

We like to think of the law as a set of firm, historical facts. You either committed a crime, or you didn't. You either qualify for a right, or you are disqualified. But right now, the Department of Justice is grappling with a much more "revelatory" question: Can the law predict the future? In July 2025, the DOJ proposed new rules to revive the long-dormant gun rights restoration program under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). The core of this program hinges on a single, heavy word: Dangerousness . If a person with a prior disqualifying record wants their rights restored, they must prove they are no longer "dangerous." The Rest of the Story The surprise isn't that we are asking the question—it’s how we are trying to answer it. We are moving away from mere "gut feelings" by judges and toward a sophisticated, albeit controversial, blend of clinical art and data science. In a recent piece I wrote for the Duke Second Thoughts blog (which was also cross-posted on t...