Volinsky back in court

Relax, he's not filing to overturn the state's school funding system again. At least not today. In between the usual must-read nuggets for political junkies, John DiStaso reports in his Granite Status column in the Union Leader that the lead lawyer in the Claremont Lawsuit is taking the case of a Dartmouth Trustee recently shown the door by his colleagues.

Manchester attorney and liberal Democrat Andru Volinsky is once again heading to court in New Hampshire on an education case.

But this one's much different than the famous Claremont education lawsuit he prominently participated in during the 1990s.

He's representing a conservative Dartmouth alumni trustee Prof. Todd J. Zywicki, who was booted off the board after a secret meeting of his peers.

Conflict disclosure: This will take a while. I'm a Dartmouth alum, and represent my class on the Alumni Council. I voted for Todd Zyxicki as a Trustee and had hoped he would serve another term. Eugene Van Loan, who is on the team representing Dartmouth in the case, is the Chairman of the Board Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, which is kind enough to pay me to write this blog, among other things.

I sympathize greatly with Zywicki's plight. Re-election to the Board of Trustees is a pro-forma step. The majority of the Board used outlandish tactics and a ridiculous excuses to boot Zywicki off because they don't like that he has continued to challenge a Dartmouth Administration that had shown no willingness to listen to alumni concerns about the direction of the College. Much like the legal battle and proposed state legislation surrounding the plan to pack the Board of Trustees in order to dilute alumni involvement in college governance, this is a matter internal to Dartmouth College. I don't see how the New Hampshire courts are involved.

I hope that Todd Zywicki and his allies prevail, and that the plan to destroy over a century of balance on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees fails. However, if you I were the judge in this case, which would be inexplicable and alarming for any number of reasons, I would likely throw the case out of court.

DiStaso also links to the Hanover Institute*, which is waging to legal battle to overturn the Board Packing plan, and to Zywicki's Amicus Brief.

*Corrected thanks to Scott's comment.

Sunday Book Review

My favorite Dartmouth Trustee (don't tell Peter Robinson) review the latest book from my favorite economics professor (don't tell Bruce Yandle):

I liked The Price of Everything even better. The main focus of the price of everything is to illuminate Hayek's idea of spontaneous order and the value of the price system as an information mechanism that enables individuals to coordinate their plans better. As a novel, the book uses the fictional narrative arc of the story to illustrate the way in which independent human actions are coordinated and evolve into a emergent order that no one sees.

The other (related) point of the novel is to illustrate and update Leonard Reed's famous essay "I, Pencil." That story is used to show the "unplanned" nature of coordination in a global economy.

I found the book quite enjoyable and filled with marvelous stories and illustrations of the principle of spontaneous order and the price system as a mechanism for coordination. My sense is that concept is often elusive for many people.