The great thing about my fall schedule is that I can tune in to Dr. Laura every day on the way into school. (12-3pm, M-F, KFI 640 AM)

I didn't listen to Dr. Laura until I had to spend a lot of time in my car every day commuting. The longer I'm in law school, the more I like her.

That's because Dr. Laura's act has two levels. One one level, she's dispensing common-sense, usually socially conservative advice on family, children, dating, etc. Some of her advice is good – e.g. women who want to marry their boyfriends shouldn't get pregnant and live together. Some is impractical – e.g. single parents shouldn't date until their children are out of the house.

But almost all her advice is based on the concept of incentives. Law school changes your brain to make you more appreciative of incentive-based rules and more skeptical of ideologically-based ones. The problem is, many of our cherished social / moral / political beliefs have no basis in incentives.

Dr. Laura exposes this gap. This is the first reason many people dislike her. "What do you mean women shouldn't live with their boyfriends and get pregnant if they want to?" We hang on to "personal choice" as this social ideal. But let's face it, if those women want to get married, they're not creating any incentives for their boyfriends to get their shit together. Dr. Laura's show is really about The Science of Getting What You Want Out of People Through Incentives. Or, if you prefer, Law and Economics.

The other level of the show is the adjudicatory theatre. Dr. Laura is a one-woman ex parte court of social justice. To do this, she employs the same basic formula as other great jurists: 1) Simplify the case to its determinative facts & issues. 2) Use a consistent set of rules. 3) Apply the rules dispassionately and rigorously to the facts.

Dr. Laura is like audio IRAC. She's not interested in talking to callers about their "thoughts" and "feelings". She just wants the facts. Once extracted, she clearly states the rule that applies. Then she announces the verdict.

She is hard on her callers. This is the second reason many dislike her. That's when you have to remember that the show is not for the benefit of the callers, it's for the benefit of the listeners. Like an appellate court selecting cases that create opportunities to extend the law, Dr. Laura chooses callers to make an example out of them.

Part of her message is the consequences of bad choices. But the other part is the importance of picking rules, sticking to them, and not getting distracted by the surrounding noise. How, she asks, can we make principled decisions about anything without being rigorous and consistent?

Though substantively I prefer Dan Savage, procedurally he's got a long way to go to catch up to Dr. Laura.

22 Sep 06