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Full-Text Articles in Law
Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus
Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus
Reviews
Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.
Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Book Chapters
Policy makers typically approach human behavior from the perspective of the rational agent model, which relics on normativc, a priori analyses. The model assumes people make insightful, well-planned, highly controlled, and calculated decisions guided by considerations of personal utility. This perspective is promoted in the social sciences and in professional schools and has come to dominate much of the formulation and conduct of policy. An alternative view, developed mostly through empirical behavioral research, and the one we will articulate here, provides a substantially difierent perspective on individual behavior and its policy and regulatory implications. According to the empirical perspective, behavior …
The Case For Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
The Case For Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Book Chapters
Policymakers approach human behavior largely through the perspective of the “rational agent” model, which relies on normative, a priori analyses of the making of rational decisions. This perspective is promoted in the social sciences and in professional schools, and has come to dominate much of the formulation and conduct of policy. An alternative view, developed mostly through empirical behavioral research, provides a substantially different perspective on individual behavior and its policy implications. Behavior, according to the empirical perspective, is the outcome of perceptions, impulses, and other processes that characterize the impressive machinery that we carry behind the eyes and between …
Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Other Publications
Financial services decisions can have enourmous consequences for household well-being. Households need a range of financial services - to conduct basic transactions, such as receiving their income, storing it, and paying bills; to save for emergency needs and long-term goals; to access credit; and to insure against life's key risks. But the financial services system is exceedingly complicated and often not well-designed to optimize house-hold behavior. In response to the complexity of out financial system, there has been a long running debate about the appropriate role and form of regulation. Regulation is largely stuck in two competing models - disclosure, …
Enough: The Failure Of The Living Will, Angela Fagerlin, Carl E. Schneider
Enough: The Failure Of The Living Will, Angela Fagerlin, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Enough. The living will has failed, and it is time to say so. We should have known it would fail: A notable but neglected psychological literature always provided arresting reasons to expect the policy of living wills to misfire. Given their alluring potential, perhaps they were worth trying. But a crescendoing empirical literature and persistent clinical disappointments reveal that the rewards of the campaign to promote living wills do not justify its costs. Nor can any degree of tinkering ever make the living will an effective instrument of social policy. As the evidence of failure has mounted, living wills have …
Race In The Courtroom: Perceptions Of Guilt And Dispositional Attributions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Race In The Courtroom: Perceptions Of Guilt And Dispositional Attributions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Articles
The present studies compare the judgments of White and Black mock jurors in interracial trials. In Study 1, the defendant’s race did not influence White college students’ decisions but Black students demonstrated ingroup/outgroup bias in their guilt ratings and attributions for the defendant’s behavior. The aversive nature of modern racism suggests that Whites are motivated to appear nonprejudiced when racial issues are salient; therefore, the race salience of a trial summary was manipulated and given to noncollege students in Study 2. Once again, the defendant’s race did not influence Whites when racial issues were salient. But in the non-race-salient version …
A "Humanitarian" Approach To Individual Injury, Christina B. Whitman
A "Humanitarian" Approach To Individual Injury, Christina B. Whitman
Reviews
Individual injury law was once an important arena for the definition of shared values. It has increasingly become the domain of various species of systems analysts who measure legal results against external norms defined by such disciplines as economics. Although legal scholars continue to use the expectations and beliefs of ordinary men and women in fashioning rules for the redress of constitutional injuries, common-law scholars have become less willing to ground legal principles in moral consensus. There are notable exceptions. Among these is Professor Marshall Shapo, who, in two recent works, attempts to develop a legal analysis of injury that …