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Flouting The Law: Does Perceived Injustice Provoke General Non-Compliance?, Janice Nadler

Law and Economics Papers

What happens when people's common sense view of justice diverges from the sense of justice they see enshrined in particular legal rules and legal outcomes? In particular, does the perception of one particular law as unjust make people less likely to comply with unrelated laws? This article reports an experiment that empirically tested the Flouting Thesis - the idea that the perceived justice of one law can influence the intention to comply with unrelated laws. Participants who were exposed to laws they perceived as unjust were more willing, as a general matter, to flout unrelated laws, compared to participants exposed …

Access To Networks: Economic And Constitutional Connections, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

Law and Economics Papers

A fundamental transformation is taking place in the basic approach to regulating network industries. Policy makers are in the process of abandoning their century-old commitment to rate regulation in favor of a new regulatory approach known as access regulation. Rather than controlling the price of outputs, the new approach focuses on compelling access to and mandating the price of inputs. Unfortunately, this shift in regulatory policy has not been met with an accompanying shift in the manner in which regulatory authorities regulate prices. Specifically, policy makers have continued to base rates on either historical or replacement cost. We argue that …

Access To Networks: Economic And Constitutional Connections, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

A fundamental transformation is taking place in the basic approach to regulating network industries. Policy makers are in the process of abandoning their century-old commitment to rate regulation in favor of a new regulatory approach known as access regulation. Rather than controlling the price of outputs, the new approach focuses on compelling access to and mandating the price of inputs. Unfortunately, this shift in regulatory policy has not been met with an accompanying shift in the manner in which regulatory authorities regulate prices. Specifically, policy makers have continued to base rates on either historical or replacement cost. We argue that …

Roundtable Discussion: Corporate Governance, William J. Carney, Jack B. Jacobs, Richard W. Painter, Robert Pritzker, Robert H. Sitkoff

Law and Economics Papers

This is a transcript of a roundtable discussion between Robert Pritzker of The Marmon Group, Inc., Vice-Chancellor Jack Jacobs of the Delaware Court of Chancery, and Law Professors William Carney, Richard Painter, and Robert Sitkoff, with Professor Carney serving as moderator. The general topic was corporate governance. Among other things the participants discussed the implications of information provided by Mr. Pritzker regarding Smith v. Van Gorkom. Mr. Pritzker stated that the $55 price and the one-week deadline were established by Jerry Van Gorkom, not the Pritzkers. Mr. Pritzker also described the terms and the motivations for the Pritzkers' contribution to …

Roundtable Discussion: Corporate Governance, William J. Carney, Jack B. Jacobs, Richard W. Painter, Robert Pritzker, Robert H. Sitkoff

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

This is a transcript of a roundtable discussion between Robert Pritzker of The Marmon Group, Inc., Vice-Chancellor Jack Jacobs of the Delaware Court of Chancery, and Law Professors William Carney, Richard Painter, and Robert Sitkoff, with Professor Carney serving as moderator. The general topic was corporate governance. Among other things the participants discussed the implications of information provided by Mr. Pritzker regarding Smith v. Van Gorkom. Mr. Pritzker stated that the $55 price and the one-week deadline were established by Jerry Van Gorkom, not the Pritzkers. Mr. Pritzker also described the terms and the motivations for the Pritzkers' contribution to …

Treaties In Collision: The Biosafety Protocol And The World Trade Organization Agreements, Sabrina Safrin

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

In the event of a conflict between the requirements of the Biosafety Protocol, a multilateral agreement governing the trade in genetically modified organisms, and the requirements of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and associated agreements (collectively WTO Agreements), which treaty's requirements prevail? This question lies as the legal heart of the perceived conflict between trade globalization and environmental protection. This issue is particularly timely given the present trade dispute between the United States and European Union over the European Union’s restrictions on the importation of genetically modified agricultural commodities.

In this piece, I analyze the relationship between these …

Some Ethical Issues Surrounding Mediation, Robert P. Burns

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

A progressively larger portion of social ordering occurs through mediation. Lawyers are often involved in mediation. From one perspective, mediation is simply facilitated negotiation. Thus the issues that pervade the ethics of negotiation reappear in the context of mediation without much change. Mediation, however, promises much more than facilitated negotiation. "Transformative mediation", now widely practiced, aims not primarily at maximizing outcomes, but at the moral transformation of the parties. This form of mediation poses much more fundamental questions about legal ethics and the lawyer's role. These questions implicate the general morality of legal and political discourse and the interrelationships of …

The Mead Doctrine: Of Rules And Standards, Meta-Rules And Meta-Standards, Thomas W. Merrill

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

In United States v. Mead Corp. the Supreme Court sought to prescribe a test for determining when the Chevron doctrine applies to agency interpretations of law. The Court got off to a good start, announcing that Chevron applies when Congress has delegated authority to an agency to make rules having the force of law, and the agency has adopted an interpretation pursuant to this authority. Unfortunately, the Court was less than clear about when Congress has delegated the required authority, applying a vague standard that incorporates such elements as whether Congress has directed the agency to use relatively formal procedures, …

Legal Phenomena, Knowledge, And Theory: A Cautionary Tale Of Hedgehogs And Foxes, Ronald Jay Allen, Ross M. Rosenberg

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

This article analyzes the susceptibility of areas of legal regulation to being organized or explained by top-down deductive theories of general applicability. It hypothesizes that at least three variables determine in part the likely relevance of general theories to sets of legal phenomena, ambiguity (gaps in the law), unpredictability (computational intractability), and the comparative need for specialized and common sense reasoning. We hypothesize that as ambiguity, unpredictability, and the utility of common sense reasoning go up, the amenability of a set of legal phenomena to general theoretical approaches decreases. We thus predict that the meaning of negligence will be resistant …