Monty Kosma

A president selecting a Supreme Court nominee, like an investor, seeks to identify the candidate who will be the most "profitable" — the one who will exert the most profound and positive influence over the law. In nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump has avoided a trap that has sometimes led past presidents, mostly Republicans, to make bad investment decisions. ...

When choosing a new justice, therefore, Obama should consider age before beauty. The question isn't if Garland and Wood are too old. Rather, is Kagan old enough?

The Framers generally recognized the need for executive power to engage in military actions to repel foreign invasion or for other emergency purposes. Although Jefferson usually spoke in terms of strict interpretation of the Constitution and a restricted view of executive power, his actions demonstrated that in matters of war and foreign affairs, the niceties of formalism must sometimes be trumped by the necessities of governing – even when the situation might not rise to the level of an… Show more

The Framers generally recognized the need for executive power to engage in military actions to repel foreign invasion or for other emergency purposes. Although Jefferson usually spoke in terms of strict interpretation of the Constitution and a restricted view of executive power, his actions demonstrated that in matters of war and foreign affairs, the niceties of formalism must sometimes be trumped by the necessities of governing – even when the situation might not rise to the level of an emergency. As Jefferson himself said, “What is practicable must often control what is pure theory.” Show less

This empirical study measures the influence of ninety-nine retired Supreme Court justices, analyzing over 1.2 million citations to over 24,000 opinions of the Court written between 1793 and 1991. It models the appointment process as the selection of a capital investment, treating a justice's output as the precedents generated each term and using citations as a proxy for an opinion's value. This model is applied to the retired justices and their opinions, and its consistency is tested by… Show more

This empirical study measures the influence of ninety-nine retired Supreme Court justices, analyzing over 1.2 million citations to over 24,000 opinions of the Court written between 1793 and 1991. It models the appointment process as the selection of a capital investment, treating a justice's output as the precedents generated each term and using citations as a proxy for an opinion's value. This model is applied to the retired justices and their opinions, and its consistency is tested by independently analyzing citations by subsequent Supreme Court and circuit court opinions. Influence values also demonstrably track the results of a well-known survey of judicial greatness. The study challenges several common assumptions. Older appointees have been no less influential than young appointees, and, on an annual basis, older appointees have actually been more influential. Private attorneys have made the most influential appointees, and former judges show no special advantages. Show less

NY Times article covering my work ("scientists at Lockheed") using the massively parallel Thinking Machines Connection Machine (CM-2) to solve the then-largest computational problem in history -- calculating the return when bouncing a high-frequency radar pulse off a metallic sphere using the method of moments to solve Maxwell's equations in integral form. Got the correct answer.

Recent progress on the development of fast and efficient methods of solving electromagnetic fields problems with the Connection Machine is reviewed. The suitability of low frequency matrix, high frequency PTD and time domain methods to the SIMD computational environment will be discussed from the point of view of recent experience.

Selected Connection Machine results for a large order Method of Moments matrix problem (N > 10,000), a high frequency PTD model calculation (up to one… Show more

Recent progress on the development of fast and efficient methods of solving electromagnetic fields problems with the Connection Machine is reviewed. The suitability of low frequency matrix, high frequency PTD and time domain methods to the SIMD computational environment will be discussed from the point of view of recent experience.

Selected Connection Machine results for a large order Method of Moments matrix problem (N > 10,000), a high frequency PTD model calculation (up to one million facets) and time and frequency domain results from a well developed time domain solver will be presented and discussed relative to problems encountered and validity of the results. A short video tape illustrating these solutions will also be presented, including time domain scattering for a range of geometries, materials and incident waveforms. Show less