Yesterday was anniversary of Dan Markel's murder—9 years ago—and I was reminded of a Dan story. It's classic Dan. And it's about this SSRN page.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Dan was thinking of writing an article about time-based limits in criminal law, like statutes of limitation, from a punishment theory perspective. (This was soon after Todd Rakoff's 2002 book on the law of time, which Dan had a copy of.)

Dan came up with a title he absolutely loved: 'Time and Punishment.' He wanted to write that article, using that title. But he didn't have the article yet, just the idea. He wanted to make sure no one else took the title. So he put up an SSRN page, to kinda reserve it.

I told him, I don't think you can do that, I think you need to have a draft first. But Dan figured there was no reason you needed the draft; it's just a placeholder. Still gestating!

Dan never did get to write that article; he ended up having a million other projects. I don't know if he planned to go back to it, but I wonder if he would have written it had he lived, and what it would have said.
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