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Constitutional Calculus: The Math of Justice and the Myth of Common Sense, by Jeff Suzuki
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How should we count the population of the United States? What would happen if we replaced the electoral college with a direct popular vote? What are the consequences of allowing unlimited partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts? Can six-person juries yield verdicts consistent with the needs of justice? Is it racist to stop and frisk minorities at a higher rate than non-minorities? These and other questions have long been the subject of legal and political debate and are routinely decided by lawyers, politicians, judges, and voters, mostly through an appeal to common sense and tradition.
But mathematician Jeff Suzuki asserts that common sense is not so common, and traditions developed long ago in what was a mostly rural, mostly agricultural, mostly isolated nation of three million might not apply to a mostly urban, mostly industrial, mostly global nation of three hundred million. In Constitutional Calculus, Suzuki guides us through the U.S. Constitution and American history to show how mathematics reveals our flaws, finds the answers we need, and moves us closer to our ideals.
From the first presidential veto to the debate over mandatory drug testing, the National Security Agency's surveillance program, and the fate of death row inmates, Suzuki draws us into real-world debates and then reveals how math offers a superior compass for decision-making. Relying on iconic cases, including the convictions of the Scottsboro boys, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, and Floyd v. City of New York, Suzuki shows that more math can lead to better justice, greater fairness, and a more stable democracy. Whether you are fascinated by history, math, social justice, or government, your interest will be piqued and satisfied by the convincing case Suzuki makes.
- Sales Rank: #925112 in Books
- Published on: 2015-01-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.02" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 296 pages
Review
A breath of fresh air. It was a reaffirmation that mathematics should be used more often to make general public policy.
(Charles Ashbacher MAA Reviews) About the Author
Jeff Suzuki is an associate professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College. He is the author of Mathematics in Historical Context and A History of Mathematics.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting but more wonkish than practical (3.5 stars)
By TChris
If I were a mathematician, I might give this book 5 stars. I can only review Constitutional Calculus from my own perspective, however, and I'm giving it 3 1/2 stars for two reasons. First, the math was way over my head and Jeff Suzuki failed to dumb it down to my level. I count that as a failing in a book that appears to be aimed at readers who probably don't have advanced degrees in math. Second, I think the first half the book is stronger than the second.
Suzuki's premise is that principles of mathematics, unlike the traditional tools used by lawyers (which he defines as reason, tradition, and common sense), are more likely to achieve the correct result in a changing world. He also suggests that mathematics will "show us a better way" than common sense or tradition when it comes to the institutions required by the Constitution and the laws that guide or limit them.
The first and strongest section of the book deals with election law, where math certainly plays (or should play) a key role. Suzuki's primary focus is on the census. The census is politically important since the results determine congressional apportionment and are relied upon to determine federal funding for a host of programs. There is little doubt that political forces are brought to bear upon the Census Bureau, which has not always been willing or able to resist them, particularly in its efforts to correct the acknowledged undercount of minority populations. Suzuki explains in some detail the history of apportionment debates in Congress, how the census could use statistical methodologies to achieve a more accurate result, how politicians thwart those suggestions, and how courts have responded to the controversy. The discussion makes clear that statistics are not immune from politics, at least as applied to the census, because selecting a methodology involves policy choices that are inherently political.
Suzuki discusses ways of deciding elections that depart from the plurality method (i.e., the candidate with the most votes wins even if the candidate does not receive a majority). His intricate discussion of runoff elections and other alternatives to plurality elections will probably be of greater interest to voting wonks than they were to this math-challenged reviewer. He also discusses open primaries and blanket primaries that (at least in the Supreme Court's view) implicate the constitutional right to free association. Gerrymandering, as you might expect, gets quite a bit of attention since it provides the perfect intersection between math and politics. The Electoral College, which I suspect almost nobody likes, receives a lengthy discussion that will be useful to those who want to understand how a candidate can win the presidency without getting the most votes. To the extent that I could follow it, I found Suzuki's discussion interesting and agree that principles of mathematics can be used to fashion fair-minded resolutions of intrinsically political issues.
It seems to me that Suzuki is on slipperier ground when he proposes mathematics as the root reasoning for deciding civil rights issues, including whether stopping and frisking people solely because of their race is justified. He urges the rejection of "abstract concepts" that I would characterize as "core constitutional values" in favor of following "optimal strategies" that might or might not permit race-based policing. He engages in a complex statistical analysis that, even if I understood it, would seem a poor substitute for the "abstract concepts" of equal protection and race neutrality. I am not comforted by his conclusion that racism is not a mathematically "efficient" means of making policing decisions, given the implication that it would be acceptable if it were more efficient.
Suzuki engages in interesting discussions of data mining and profiling and the value of tests (such as DNA and drug testing) that may produce false matches or false positives. At points, however, the math became so oppressive that I lost his point. The discussions of Brandon Mayfield (falsely arrested for terrorism on the basis of a profile) and of the Scottsboro Boys (wrongly convicted of rape by a statistically improbable all-white jury) have value, but it doesn't take advanced math to persuade me that an obvious wrong is wrong.
I agree with Suzuki that statistics can provide convincing proof of racial bias in assembling jury pools, in selecting juries, and in the implementation of the death penalty. Those statistics are largely ignored by judges who do not understand them or, more commonly, do not like what they reveal, but that does not lessen their value.
A lengthy discussion of 6 versus 12 person juries will, again, appeal largely to wonks. In criminal cases, at least, the tradition of requiring 12 jurors to agree upon guilt is a stronger hedge against unjust convictions than a 6 person jury would be. Values are more important than math when it comes to protecting the innocent.
Some of Suzuki's ideas are too disconnected from the real world to be of practical value. The notion that judges should use "social network analysis" to decide how to sentence federal drug conspirators makes me wonder whether Suzuki has ever met a federal judge. Expecting a legislator to consider a Markov chain when analyzing the utility of "three strikes" sentencing is equally unreal. One hardly needs to turn to advanced math to know that draconian sentencing laws are unwise. The impetus for sentencing reform (which, thankfully, has begun to gain traction) will come from notions of fairness, not mathematics.
There is clearly a place for mathematics and statistical analysis in the law. In the end, I agree with many of Suzuki's conclusions, but in many areas of the law that he discusses, I disagree that math "shows us a better way" of reaching those conclusions than reasoning and common sense.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Creative statistical and mathematical approaches to tackling constitutional and legalistic issues; readability can be improved
By OnceMore
In this book, math professor Jeff Suzuki shows us how constitutional and legalistic issues can be viewed or modelled from a statistical or mathematical angle and the advantages that such an approach can provide over traditional approaches based on more abstract and ambiguous notions of "fairness," and "justice."
The constitutional and legalistic issues discussed include: how to get census results more quickly and more economically but still fairly accurately than the currently used labor- and resource-intensive methods; how to conceptualize the advantages and disadvantages of using electoral college votes over popular votes in the election of our president and how to decide whether our process for electing our president needs changes or not; potential approaches to challenging the legality of gerrymandering / congressional redistricting practices and arguing against racial profiling; what aspects of the jury selection and decision making processes have been found important to "fair" jury trials; what approaches can be used to argue that a person's Eighth Amendment right under our Constitution (Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted) was violated.
The core mathematical concepts covered in this book are not very complicated by themselves. Readers familiar with probability and statistical concepts such as sampling, standard deviations, confidence intervals, and inferencing etc.; Bayes' Theorem; Game Theory; Markov Chains; social network analysis; and data clustering will find it easiest to follow along, but the author does provide necessary introductions to these concepts and the explanations for the core concepts are generally understandable.
The difficulties I encountered have more to do with how the discussion doesn't always flow smoothly for one or more of the following reasons: (A) introductions to the mathematical concepts are embedded in the middle of each chapter, requiring readers to lose their train of thought in order to switch gears; (B) those introductions are sometimes unnecessarily long-winded so by the time the author returns to the primary topic under discussion, readers not only have to switch gears again but also to backtrack to remind themselves of where the author left things off so that they could reconnect to that discussion thread; and (C) in following the discussions on how a mathematical concept can be applied to the topic at hand, readers often have to contend with caveats and qualifications representing legalistic or mathematical nuances, wrinkles, and minutiae, all of which increase the cognitive load imposed upon the readers.
Consider the chapter on Social Network Analysis, for example. The chapter begins with the description of a case where the punishment received for a drug-distribution-related offense might have been disproportionately harsher than usual. The suggested mathematical approach for arguing this uses Social Network Analysis, where a person's status in a drug-distribution-network can be calculated as a function of the person's degree of "centrality" or connectedness to other members in the network. To show this, the author launches into a very involved introduction to Social Network Analysis that shows not only how to calculate the aforementioned "centrality" measure but also other types of measures using the analysis of terrorist networks as the long-running example. Because the analyses of terrorist networks require some caveats, the author also goes into some details regarding how to address those caveats. While the latter discussion was personally interesting to me because I learned something new and interesting, that discussion was not necessarily needed to support what the author wanted to say about the applicability of Social Network Analysis to the case referenced at the beginning of the chapter, which is: Presumably, convicted offenders with similar status in a drug-distribution-network should receive similar sentences. Disparities in punishments that are too great might therefore be grounds for appeals to reduce harsher sentences to be more similar to the lighter sentences received by similar offenders.
Overall, the subject matters covered in this book are interesting and substantive, and tackled creatively and discussed reasonably well. Some of the mathematical approaches discussed in this book have actually been used successfully to change the minds of politicians and legal thinkers. For example, after repeatedly failing to persuade politicians and courts to strike down draconian "three strikes you're out" state laws as unconstitutional based on abstract "fairness" and "justice" arguments, opponents of such laws have been able to push alternatives to the law by using mathematical arguments similar to the ones discussed in the book (e.g., the cost of imposing a life sentence for those who commit nonviolent and property crimes far outweighs the cost of the crimes they would commit).
I think the readability of the book, however, can be improved by perhaps separating out the introductions to the mathematical concepts into their own chapters, or to keep them more focused on only what's really needed for readers to follow the main discussion thread. Cutting down on minutiae and digressions will also help.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Well-Written and Fun (Really) for Math-Oriented Politicos of All Persuasions
By frankp93
`Probability, Statistics, and the Constitution' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well but would make a more appropriate title.
(And if you're a little rusty on your means and modes, deviations, Bayes Theorem, binomial distribution and hypergeometric probability an excellent workbook-style intro such a `Probability Demystified' by Allan G. Bluman would make the perfect preamble for this constitutional entrée.)
And that `Constitution' in the title isn't meant as any dog signal either. While the book covers oft-politicized issues including the census, electoral college, gerrymandering, the effectiveness of the jury system, the author is a mathematician, not a political pundit, nor for that matter a constitutional scholar.
Not only is there (thankfully) no discernable partisan slant here, the author's implicit argument is that many of the issues we currently stretch beyond logic, distort, and politicize would be better decided using applied mathematical models and principles. Suzuki argues a more `verifiable' justice and sense of fairness would result that would lead, presumably, to a less fractious body politic.
Park your cynicism at the curb and hear the man out. He writes beautifully and even-tempered in sufficient and interesting detail without overwhelming the reader with math-for-math's sake and legal minutiae.
Of course, proposing a political system run `by the numbers' is really a variation on the often-argued, "Why can't the government be run more like a business?".
And one answer in both cases is that - ideally - government aspires to treat its natural resources and citizenry as more than expendable balance sheet assets, and with enough messy compromise, illogic, sense of tradition, benefit of the doubt, and moral considerations to drive a mathematician (and many an MBA) to absolute distraction. And face it, plenty of us wouldn't have it any other way.
`Pi in the sky?' Perhaps, but Jeff Suzuki's book is an enjoyable and well-written romp through applied math in the context of constitutional issues.
If your favorite part of election night is listening to the `stat guys' talk about vote projection methodologies, you'll love it.
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