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Benefit-Cost Analysis And Distributional Weights: An Overview, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2016

Benefit-Cost Analysis And Distributional Weights: An Overview, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is insensitive to distributional concerns. A policy that improves the lives of the rich, and makes the poor yet worse off, will be approved by CBA as long as the policy’s aggregate monetized benefits are positive. Distributional weights offer an apparent solution to this troubling feature of the CBA methodology: adjust costs and benefits with weighting factors that are inversely proportional to the well-being levels (as determined by income and also perhaps non-income attributes such as health) of the affected individuals.

Indeed, an academic literature dating from the 1950s discusses how to specify distributional weights. And …


The Case For Lgbt Equality: Reviving The Political Process Doctrine And Repurposing The Dormant Commerce Clause, Terri R. Day, Danielle Weatherby Jan 2016

The Case For Lgbt Equality: Reviving The Political Process Doctrine And Repurposing The Dormant Commerce Clause, Terri R. Day, Danielle Weatherby

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


From Outlaw To Outcast To In-Law? Contesting The Perils Of Marriage Equality, Linda C. Mcclain Jan 2016

From Outlaw To Outcast To In-Law? Contesting The Perils Of Marriage Equality, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

I am pleased to offer the opening commentary in this BU Law Review Annex symposium on Professor Katherine Franke’s provocative new book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality. As previewed by the book’s additional subtitle, “How African Americans and Gays Mistakenly Thought the Right to Marry Would Set Them Free,” Franke aims to provide “cautionary tales” gleaned, or lessons learned, from juxtaposing post-Civil War regulation of the marriages of African Americans freed from slavery with today’s movement for marriage equality for gay men and lesbians.3 Long a skeptic about the gay community’s focus on the goal of marriage—its (in …


Dna And Distrust, Kerry Abrams, Brandon L. Garrett Jan 2016

Dna And Distrust, Kerry Abrams, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, government regulation and funding of DNA testing has reshaped the use of genetic evidence across various fields, including criminal law, family law, and employment law. Courts have struggled with questions of when and whether to treat genetic evidence as implicating individual rights, policy trade-offs, or federalism problems. We identify two modes of genetic testing: identification testing, used to establish a person’s identity, and predictive testing, which seeks to predict outcomes for a person. Judges and lawmakers have often drawn a bright line at predictive testing, while allowing uninhibited identity testing. The U.S. Supreme Court in …


Comments On The Morality Of Freedom, Joseph Raz Jan 2016

Comments On The Morality Of Freedom, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper mixes comments on the ambitions that motivated writing The Morality of Freedom with observations on comments on the book, made at a conference in Jerusalem in 2016, by Japa Pallikkathayil, Avishai Margalit, Michael Otsuka, Jon Quong, Daniel Viehoff, Asaf Sharon and Arudra Burra. It acknowledges some of the critical points made while resisting others. Its strives to combine clarification of some of the themes in the book with recognition that its ideas require further development, and can be developed in various directions.


Dignity Rights: A Response To Peggy Cooper Davis's Little Citizens And Their Families, Jane M. Spinak Jan 2016

Dignity Rights: A Response To Peggy Cooper Davis's Little Citizens And Their Families, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Spinak responds to Professor Davis’ comment by considering how the concept of human dignity can be used to reassert human rights – of individual members of the family and the family as an entity – that have been diminished, if not destroyed, by poverty and inequality.