In 1900, mathematician David Hilbert gave an enormously influential speech listing 23 major mathematical problems to be studied in the coming century. (English text here.) The problems were unresolved at the time, but some have since been solved. A century later, the Clay Mathematics Institute put money behind seven mathematical problems – a million dollar award (the Millenium Prize) for a solution.
Is there a legal equivalent? (Some jokester suggested to me that problem number one was whether there were any problems.) And is there anything distinctively legal about the problems? So I can think of issues that would benefit from the participation of lawyers and law professors – water availability and distribution, disease prevention – but I am not quick to identify legal problems.
I do find Hilbert’s description attractive, although maybe very “last century” and maybe specific to a field like mathematics: “A mathematical problem should be difficult in order to entice us, yet not completely inaccessible, lest it mock at our efforts. It should be to us a guide post on the mazy paths to hidden truths, and ultimately a reminder of our pleasure in the successful solution.”
Posted by Verity Winship on November 10, 2011 at 11:31 AM
Comments
I think James Grimmelmann is right.
Posted by: Annette Gordon-Reed | Nov 12, 2011 11:43:06 AM
Maybe the connection to the Hilbert list is just a semantic similarity – we call them math and legal “problems” but mean something fundamentally different. However, I do think as a profession we should be thinking in terms of problems in a more systematic way than we do now. And I wonder if a formulation of legal issues could inspire long-term collaboration and efforts like Hilbert’s did for the mathematical community.
Posted by: Verity Winship | Nov 11, 2011 3:16:30 PM
I think the fact that some commenters above are confusing the term “problem” and thinking of “something-I-want-to-be-changed” rather than what a math “problem” is (i.e., “something-that-can-be-irrefutably-solved-via-logical equation”) supports Mr. Grimmelman’s position above and shows us the incompatibility of the two schemes. The first step is to remove all preferences for outcomes, without which there is no law to begin with.
Posted by: Joel | Nov 11, 2011 10:49:58 AM
Miriam’s are *really* good, as is the incarceration problem. Add to the list the perpetual problem that we have no single, uniformly accepted method for determining the meaning of our own Constitution. We don’t even have a method that commands some kind of large majority consensus. The fact that the Constitution is (at least by the lights of most) our most basic set of legal provisions makes that seem like a real and very serious problem.
Posted by: anon | Nov 11, 2011 9:48:02 AM
1) The seemingly intractable problem of adhesion contracts, and contract law’s inability to deal with them in a way that doesn’t run roughshod over consumer’s rights; 2) The system of shareholder derivative litigation, which does not seem to deter the type of corporate wrongdoing that is should deter.
I agree with the above commenter who noted the lack of good, free legal databases for our government materials. That’s been a troubling problem for many years.
Posted by: Miriam A. Cherry | Nov 10, 2011 11:01:54 PM
Are there means of controlling the tendency toward hypertrophic complexity in the law? Some areas of the law do see periodic “housecleanings” — the UCC and the English Law of Property Act 1925 would be two examples. But it doesn’t always happen, and the pain of impending collapse that typically triggers a response can be very costly.
Posted by: Frank Bennett | Nov 10, 2011 9:05:59 PM
I was just about to say, more or less, what Anon 12:40:37 said. If you want a big identifiably-legal problem to which the answer isn’t “just keep trying to nudge the law here or there in the traditional methods of lawyering,” that’s your answer.
Posted by: Sam | Nov 10, 2011 12:54:14 PM
In my view the single biggest LEGAL problem in need of fixing is America’s infatuation with incarceration and the use of the criminal justice system as a system of social control for poor/minority communities.
Posted by: Anon | Nov 10, 2011 12:40:37 PM
I’ve got an easy one for you.
The problem is that there is no free, online, comprehensive collection of primary source law for the law schools, law students and citizens in the US to find, access and research the laws that they subject to. I call it the DPLLA or Digital Public LAW Library of America.
More info here… http://www2.cali.org/screencasts/DPLLA/
Posted by: John Mayer | Nov 10, 2011 12:36:57 PM
The spirit of Hilbert’s program was so specific to the sciences — indeed, to mathematics — that I would be hesitant to search for parallels anywhere else.
“However unapproachable the se problems may seem to us and how ever helpless we stand before them, we have, nevertheless, the firm conviction that their solution must follow by a finite number of purely logical processes.”
“This conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a powerful incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call: There is the problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in mathematics there is no ignorabimus.”
The nature of a mathematical “problem,” of a mathematical “solution,” and of mathematical “progress” are so alien to what we do in law that the project doesn’t carry over.
Posted by: James Grimmelmann | Nov 10, 2011 12:13:08 PM
As funding models for lawschools are put under pressure, they may go towards a more project or problem-based model (NSF grants, etc.), so there may be practical payoff for thinking about the types of problems we are most equipped to solve.
Posted by: Verity Winship | Nov 10, 2011 12:06:21 PM