05.25a The Duties of a President-Judge; Easterbrook, Amelia, and Elizabeth at ALEA; Running Conferences. One morning at the American Law and Economics Association conference I brought my two girls-- Amelia, aged five, and Elizabeth, three-- to Northwestern Law School to see where I'd been spending my time while we were visiting Chicago. As we came in, we passed Frank Easterbrook, a judge on the Seventh Circuit federal appellate court and President of ALEA that year. He stopped to say hi and introduce himself to the girls. They like judges, having met a few at George Mason institutes. As we walked away, I explained to them that not only was Mr. Easterbrook a judge, he was President of the conference ---not of the whole country, like President Bush, but in charge of this conference.

"I see," said Amelia, after thinking about it. "He stops people from hitting each other. And ripping clothes."

"And grabbing!" chimed in Elizabeth.

My girls actually don't know what Chicago-style workshops can be like. But they had the right idea for ALEA. And, actually, Judge Easterbrook did an unusually good job in this line. He clearly instructed session chairs (of whom I was one) to rad the papers, to limit speakers to lecturing for 15 minutes of the half-hour session, and to make some effort to get audience participation. From what I saw, we chairs obeyed, to everyone's benefit. Fifteen minutes is about the same as thirty for advertising a paper, and audience participation is usually good for both speaker and audience-- it helps the audience stay alert, and the less the speaker talks, the more he learns. (Note: this comparative statics result holds only in equilibrium.) [This page is http://mypage.iu.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.05.25a.htm]

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