Law Commons^™

Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article takes anthropologists’ renewed interest in property theory as an opportunity to consider legal theory-making as an ethnographic subject in its own right. My focus is on one particular construct – the instrument, or relation of means to ends, that animates both legal and anthropological theories about property. An analysis of the workings of this construct leads to the conclusion that rather than critique the ends of legal knowledge, the anthropology of property should devote itself to articulating its own means.

Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“The Bank of Japan is our mother,” bankers in Tokyo sometimes said of Japan's central bank. Drawing on this metaphor as an ethnographic resource, and on the example of central bankers who sought to unwind their own technocratic knowledge by replacing it with a real-time machine, I retrace the ethnographic task of unwinding technocratic knowledge from those anthropological knowledge practices that critique technocracy. In so doing, I draw attention to special methodological problems—involving the relationship between ethnography, analysis, and reception—in the representation and critique of contemporary knowledge practices.

A Moderate Defense Of Hate Speech Regulations On University Campuses, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The regulation of hate speech on public and private university campuses is a fiercely contested and divisive issue. Professor Bradley Wendel defends the middle ground in this debate. This Essay argues that concerns about abuses of power by those in positions of authority are unfounded when an institution possesses greater expertise in a domain than the citizens who are affected by the institution’s decision, provided that the institution is acting on the basis of reasons that are shared by the affected individual.

The Conviction Of Andrea Yates: A Narrative Of Denial, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Financing Chinese Capitalism: Principal Banks, Economic Crisis, And Chinese Family Firms In Singapore, Henry W. Yeung

Cultural Approaches to Asian Financial Markets

It is a widely circulated myth that Chinese family firms rely exclusively on kinship ties and network capital to finance their domestic and international operations. In this empirical paper, I argue that large Chinese family firms are increasingly engaging with financial markets on a global scale. In order to finance their transnational business activities, these firms require financial services from banks beyond their domestic economies, resulting in a growing number and geographical spread of their principal banks. Second, I contend that as these Chinese family firms are diversifying their principal banks beyond a narrow confinement to other Chinese family-owned banks …

The Uncertain Psychological Case For Paternalism, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

On The Proper Motives Of Corporate Directors (Or, Why You Don't Want To Invite Homo Economicus To Join Your Board), Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the most important questions in corporate governance is how directors of public corporations can be motivated to serve the interests of the firm. Directors frequently hold only small stakes in the companies they manage. Moreover, a variety of legal rules and contractual arrangements insulate them from liability for business failures. Why then should we expect them to do a good job?

Conventional corporate scholarship has great difficulty wrestling with this question, in large part because conventional scholarship usually adopts the economist's assumption that directors are rational actors motivated purely by self-interest. This homo economicus model of behavior may …

The Cognitive Components Of Punishment, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Judging By Heuristic: Cognitive Illusions In Judicial Decision Making, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Many people rely on mental shortcuts, or heuristics, to make complex decisions, but this sometimes leads to inaccurate inferences, or cognitive illusions. A recent study suggests such cognitive illusions influence judicial decision making.

Cognitive Psychology And Optimal Government Design, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Mixed Signals: Rational-Choice Theories Of Social Norms And The Pragmatics Of Explanation, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The question of how societies secure cooperation and order in the absence of state enforced sanctions has long vexed law and economics scholars. Recently the concept of social norms--informally enforced rules of behavior--has occupied the attention of a large number of these theorists, who are concerned with understanding why economically rational actors would bother to follow rules whose costs seem to outweigh their benefits. Because of the prestige (or at least trendiness) of law and economics, it seems that now everyone in the legal academy is talking about social norms. This burgeoning scholarship is closely related to a wider concern …

Inside The Judicial Mind, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The quality of the judicial system depends upon the quality of decisions that judges make. Even the most talented and dedicated judges surely commit occasional mistakes, but the public understandably expects judges to avoid systematic errors. This expectation, however, might be unrealistic. Psychologists who study human judgment and choice have learned that people frequently fall prey to cognitive illusions that produce systematic errors in judgment. Even though judges are experienced, well-trained, and highly motivated decision makers, they might be vulnerable to cognitive illusions. We report the results of an empirical study designed to determine whether five common cognitive illusions (anchoring, …

Is Evolutionary Analysis Of Law Science Or Storytelling?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In recent years, some legal scholars have argued that legal scholarship could benefit from a greater reliance on theories of human behavior that arise from biological evolution. These scholars contend that reliance on biological evolution would successfully combine the rigor of economics with the scientific aspects of psychology. Complex legal systems, however, are uniquely human. Law has always been the product of cognitive processes that are unique to humans and that developed as a response to an environment that no longer exists. Consequently, the evolutionary development of the cognitive mechanisms upon which law depends cannot be rigorously modeled or studied …

An Ethnography Of Abstractions?, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Heuristics And Biases In The Court: Ignorance Or Adaptation?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Psychology Of Global Climate Change, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In its attempt to address the threat of global climate change, society has struggled to reach a consensus regarding the need for preventive measures. Professor Rachlinski describes the threat of global climate change as a unique commons dilemma and explains that various psychological phenomena of judgment render it unlikely that society will be able to respond effectively to the threat. After considering the effects of biased assimilation, loss aversion, and other psychological processes, the author explains that an innovative approach is necessary to properly address the dilemma of global climate change.

Specifically, the author examines the prospect of governmental intervention …

Regulating In Foresight Versus Judging Liability In Hindsight: The Case Of Tobacco, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Potentially dangerous products, such as cigarettes, can be regulated through ex post liability or ex ante regulation. Both systems should reach the same result. In practice, however, cognitive biases that influence the liability system can produce incentives to take an excess of precautions. In particular, because people tend to see past events as more predictable than they really were, judges and juries will tend to find defendants who took reasonable care negligent or even reckless. As a consequence of these biases, a liability system can be more expensive than a regulatory system, both to potential defendants and to society. Cognitive …

Legal Rules And Social Reform, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Social Norms, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.

A Positive Psychological Theory Of Judging In Hindsight, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Digital Legal Information: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Feminism, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gains, Losses, And The Psychology Of Litigation, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Internet For Legal Information - The U.S. Experience, Claire M. Germain, Pat Court, Jean Wenger, Scott Childs

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Scholar's Workstation Now A Reality! Enhancing Faculty Information Access And Delivery, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Essay On Private Remedies, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of Health Law Research And An Annotated Bibliography, Richard A. Danner, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreign Experiences Toward The Development Of A National Legal Information Center, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This comparative study discusses whether selected foreign countries--Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany--have a history of a movement toward the establishment of a national information center. The author examines the development of existing law libraries and libraries with large legal collections, analyzes the role played by the national library of each country, and describes some cooperative accomplishments at the regional and national level. Comparisons are drawn with what is expected of a national legal information center in the United States.

The Librarian Fellowship Program At The Max-Planck-Institute For Foreign And International Private Law In Hamburg, West Germany, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.