Ex Post Facto

“The surest way to reduce the trade deficit is to wreck the economy.”--Riley

From a paper on a China medical program: The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) rolled out in China from 2003-2008 provided insurance to 800 million rural Chinese. We combine aggregate mortality data with individual survey data, and identify the impact of the NCMS from program rollout and heterogeneity across areas in their rural share. We find that there was a significant decline in aggregate mortality, with the program saving more than one million lives per year at its peak, and explaining 78% of the entire increase in life expectancy in China over this period. We confirm these mortality effects using micro-data on mortality, other health outcomes, and utilization.

Leslie Van Houten is loose.

Ex Post Facto

Ex post facto law and Bill of Attainder are two legal outrages specifically forbidden in the American Constitution simply because they are so abusive. Ex post facto applies laws in retrospect, making something legal previously, illegal at the time it was legal. A Bill of Attainder is a law aimed at a specific individual. These concepts are so obviously unjust--and are so often generated by personal malice or political enthusiasm--that any thoughtful person--and the Founding Fathers had them in abundance--would easily reject the concept. As would anybody.

But not now. Now people are being held legally responsible for legal acts done by total strangers years ago when those acts were legal but currently despised. Vicarious--or imputed--liability is a real legal concept, usually with respect to parent-child or employer-employee. A child or employee can be seen as an agent of the parent or employer. That concept is a reasonable debate. But how is holding total strangers, generations later, responsible for presumed consequences of legal acts hundreds of years ago at all reasonable?

How could ex post facto laws be taken seriously, then made inherited?

The answer is hidden in Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent in the Harvard discrimination case: The Black community needs assistance--legal, reasonable, abusive or not. That is the sign of a culture twisting itself to accommodate a protected class.