Public Finance

Online
Essay
Paying with Lumps
Brian Galle
Brian Galle is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.

The author is grateful to the Coase Sandor Institute and the staff of the University of Chicago Law Review for organizing and carrying out a great conference. He also needs to thank Matt Adler, Yonathan Arbel, Jordan Barry, Jake Brooks, Chris Brummer, Don Langevoort, Michael Pollack, Josh Teitelbaum, and Bob Thompson for helpful comments, and Bobby Bartlett and Justin McCrary for penning the paper that inspired Part IV of the Essay. The biggest thanks, of course, go to Lee Fennell, who wrote a book packed with ideas, and also proffered sharp and gracious commentary on all the symposium papers. We hope she writes another one soon.

Slices and Lumps, the remarkable new book by Professor Lee Fennell, begins from the title itself to tell a story about the instability of how the world is organized. Lumps can be natural things, formed in a bowl by humidity’s kiss, but slices are often the work of human intervention.