Law Commons^™

Beyond Candor, Scott Altman

Michigan Law Review

In Part I, I consider whether judges might hold inaccurate beliefs that make them more candid and constrained. I suggest that even if theories of neutral decisionmaking are incomplete and inaccurate, a legal system in which judges hold these beliefs about their own behavior could have advantages. If many judges believe that they can, should, and do decide almost all cases by following the law, they might behave differently than they would if they held more accurate beliefs. They might behave so as to facilitate repression and denial, because their self-esteem depends on maintaining the belief that they decide as …

Public Interest Organizations, J. Jacobson

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Public Law—Arkansas Freedom Of Information Act—Working Papers And Litigation Files Of Attorneys Hired By Public Entities Are Subject To Disclosure. City Of Fayetteville V. Edmark, 304 Ark. 179, 801 S.W.2d 275 (1990)., Lawrence W. Jackson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Democratic And Republican Parties As Organizers Of Shadow Interest Groups, Jonathan R. Macey

Michigan Law Review

This article advances a new theory to explain the relationship between political parties and interest groups. Among the as yet unanswered questions that I resolve are: (1) why many politicians -both Republicans and Democrats - develop a reputation for "party loyalty" despite the parties' inability to employ any meaningful sanctions against politicians who deviate from the party line; (2) why candidates for public office run in contested primaries when running as an independent generally would be a less costly mechanism for getting on the ballot; (3) why the two major U.S. political parties continue to attract resources from contributors and …

Public Interest Organizations, J. Jacobson

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Democracy And Its Critics, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Retrieving Positivism: Law As Bibliolatry, Frederick C. Decoste

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal positivism is a curious phenomenon in both its theoretical and sociological parts. It is curious as theory because its very existence, as theory, is often questioned, and because, even when its existence is admitted, the nature of the theory, and who does and does not qualify as an adherent most often remains in dispute. It is curious sociologically because rare is the legal theoretician who forthrightly endorses positivism: positivists, it would appear, are as scarce as the formalists among whom they used to be numbered.

Critical Legal Studies, Michael F. Colosi

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Critical Legal Studies by Allan C. Hutchinson

Democracy And Its Critics, Cary Coglianese

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Democracy and Its Critics by Robert A. Dahl

The Interpreters, Kenneth L. Karst

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Justice as Translation: An Essay in Cultural and Legal Criticism by James Boyd White

Happy Slaves: A Critique Of Consent Theory, Adam C. Sloane

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory by Don Herzog

Social Irresponsibility, Actuarial Assumptions, And Wealth Redistribution: Lessons About Public Policy From A Prepaid Tuition Program, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I shall try to illuminate the question of how governments, as opposed to private insurers, grapple with the problem of intergenerational social irresponsibility. I shall do so by analyzing and criticizing a single public program. That program, the Michigan Education Trust (MET), was the most widely publicized government action in the field of higher education finance during the 1980s. MET allows parents of young children to purchase contracts promising to cover the children's tuition at Michigan public colleges when they enroll up to eighteen years later.

In setting forth this case study, I also attempt to develop …

Can Ignorance Be Bliss? Imperfect Information As A Positive Influence In Political Institutions, Michael A. Fitts

Michigan Law Review

In Parts I and II, I shall summarize the law-and-economics and civic virtue perspectives on the value of political information and their proposals for reforms in the political process that would stimulate greater political information. These two literatures are often viewed as distinct in their objectives: one seeking to improve means/ends rationality; the other seeking to improve goal formation - a function that I loosely describe as normative, ethical, or value-based. Nevertheless, they share some common practical approaches where information is concerned. In Part Ill, I shall discuss the instrumental advantages to limiting political information, focusing particularly on the role …

Maintaining Consistency In The Law Of The Large Circuit: The Origins And Operation Of The Ninth Circuit's Limited En Banc Court, Arthur D. Hellman

Book Chapters

Once again, Congress is considering legislation to divide the largest of the federal judicial circuits, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit extends over nine western states, including California, and it has 29 active judges, almost twice the number of the next-largest circuit. Much of the debate over proposals for restructuring focuses on a feature unique to the Ninth Circuit, the limited en banc court (LEBC). In all of the other circuits, when the court of appeals grants rehearing en banc, the case is heard by all active judges. In the Ninth Circuit, the en banc court is …

International Obligation And The Theory Of Hypothetical Consent, Fernando R. Tesón

Scholarly Publications

In this article I make three related arguments. First, I argue that the traditional approach to the problem of international obligation is incomplete and much too simplistic. Drawing in part on the ideas of Ronald Dworkin, I suggest that rather than a question of fidelity to international law, the foundational problem is the determination of international law. Second, I consider and reject two theories of international obligation: the theory based on the concept of interdependence and the theory of actual consent of states. Third, I suggest a theory of international obligation based on human rights. This theory is drawn from …

Public Interest Organizations, J. Jacobson

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Some Implications Of Cognitive Psychology For Risk Regulation, Roger G. Noll, James E. Krier

Articles

Beginning with a set of books and articles published in the 1950s, cognitive psychologists have developed a new descriptive theory of how people make decisions under conditions of risk and uncertainty. A dominant theme in the theory is that most people do not evaluate risky circumstances in the manner assumed by conventional decision theory-they do not, that is, seek to maximize the expected value of some function when selecting among actions with uncertain outcomes. The purpose of this article is to consider some implications of the cognitive theory for regulatory policies designed to control risks to life, health, and the …

Stalking The Squeeze: Understanding Commodities Market Manipulation, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

This article addresses the perplexing and important problem of how to distinguish valid, large-scale trading activity from a squeeze. Part I analyzes and reformulates what I will call the price-impact test, according to which manipulation is conduct motivated by its impact on price. This test, I contend, states a necessary but not sufficient condition for characterizing conduct as a squeeze. Part II offers a substantially different test, which I call the modified-sanctions approach. Under this approach, the price-impact test is used as a preliminary safe-harbor standard. The modified-sanctions approach goes further, however, recognizing that the essence of a squeeze is …

Risk, Courts, And Agencies, Clayton P. Gillette, James E. Krier

Articles

Public risks are precisely the risks that have recently captured the attention of the legal community and the world at large, in no small part because they give rise to such novel problems for lawyers and such grave apprehensions among lay people. Public risks have moved the legal system to relax doctrines--regarding, for example, standards of causation and culpability, burdens of proof, sharing of liability--that were designed to deal with the private risks that once dominated the landscape. And public risks have moved lay people to intensify their demands for risk control measures. These developments suggest that public risks are …

On The Road To Radical Reform: A Critical Review Of Unger's Politics, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Two aims drive this essay. The first is to provide the reader with an accessible, yet relatively comprehensive, introduction to Roberto Mangabeira Unger's social and legal theory. The second aim is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Unger's most recent scholarship and to make some suggestions as to where he goes awry. In particular, the author draws several parallels between the Ungerian enterprise and that of some feminists. The central motivation of the essay is to keep the critical conversation between male radicals and feminists open. To this end, the author posits the possibility of mutually beneficial contributions.

Reviving Participant Compensation, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Over the last quarter century, Congress has clearly recognized the importance of expanding public participation in federal administrative agency proceedings. It has expressly required that many agencies solicit citizen input and facilitate active public involvement in administrative processes while commanding governmental officials to consider thoroughly in their decisionmaking the views of all interests that might be affected. Congress has attempted to develop some mechanisms for promoting increased citizen participation in agency processes, but the legislative branch has been relatively unsuccessful in actually enhancing public involvement. Because citizen participants, such as public interest groups or individual consumers, have comparatively few resources …

An Independent Public Law, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the application of numerous Federal Rules in public law litigation to show how the resurrection of private law approaches and hostility toward public interest litigants serves to disadvantage public interest litigants. The assessment is intended to discourage such future enforcement of the Federal Rules and analogous judicial treatment in other areas of public law. The Article is also meant to foster greater appreciation of public law and the articulation of a larger complement of public law principles so as to facilitate the growth of an independent public law.

Book Review, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Common-Law Background Of Nineteenth-Century Tort Law, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A century ago Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., examined the history of negligence in search of a general theory of tort. He concluded that from the earliest times in England, the basis of tort liability was fault, or the failure to exercise due care. Liability for an injury to another arose whenever the defendant failed "to use such care as a prudent man would use under the circumstances.” A decade ago Morton J. Horwitz reexamined the history of negligence for the same purpose and concluded that negligence was not originally understood as carelessness or fault. Rather, negligence meant "neglect or failure …

Foreword: Antitrust As Public Interest Law, Rudolph J.R. Peritz

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Progressive And Conservative Constitutionalism, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

American constitutional law in general, and fourteenth amendment jurisprudence in particular, is in a state of profound transformation. The "liberal-legalist" and purportedly politically neutral understanding of constitutional guarantees that dominated constitutional law and theory during the fifties, sixties, and seventies, is waning, both in the courts and in the academy. What is beginning to replace liberal legalism in the academy, and what has clearly replaced it on the Supreme Court, is a very different conception - a new paradigm - of the role of constitutionalism, constitutional adjudication, and constitutional guarantees in a democratic state. Unlike the liberal-legal paradigm it is …

Regulating Regulators: The Legal Environment Of The State, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this paper I focus on the ability of tort law to reduce primary costs, or losses associated with the number and seriousness of accidents. In one sense I will be analysing the state as if it were a private firm in which losses suffered by private individuals and firms are externalities. Several years ago Mark Spitzer wrote a paper on this topic in which he posited several models of state activity and analysed the incentive effects of liability rules in each case. In my view Spitzer's general conclusion - the rule which may be synthesized from all of the …

Risk And Design, James E. Krier

Articles

Risk springs from uncertainty,' uncertainty invites error, and, since error can be costly, we would prefer to avoid it (provided, of course, that avoidance is not more costly yet). While there is much in the Noll and Krier article2 about judgmental error under conditions of risk and uncertainty, there is little about ways to avoid it. So avoidance-more accurately, minimization-of error costs is the topic I want to address very briefly and partially here.

Review Of Christopher F. Mooney, Public Virtue: Law And The Social Character Of Religion (1986), Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Rules Of Conduct And Principles Of Adjudication, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article I will show why our legal system's rules of conduct are presently unclear, how the system arrived at its current state, and what can be done to make the rules of conduct clearer. My arguments and conclusions are, in brief, as follows: The criminal law fails to communicate clear rules of conduct because it fails to distinguish this communicative function from that of adjudicating violations of the rules, which requires primarily an assessment of the blameworthiness of the violator. These two functions - announcing public rules of conduct and assessing individual blame in adjudication of a violation …