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Articles 31 - 37 of 37

Full-Text Articles in Law

Pick A Number, Any Number: State Representation In Congress After The 2000 Census, Suzanna Sherry, Paul H. Edelman Jan 2002

Pick A Number, Any Number: State Representation In Congress After The 2000 Census, Suzanna Sherry, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this essay, Professors Edelman and Sherry explain the mathematics behind the allocation of congressional seats to each state, and survey the different methods of allocation that Congress has used over the years. Using 2000 census figures, they calculate each state's allocation under five different methods, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods.


European Courts, American Rights: Extradition And Prison Conditions, Daniel J. Sharfstein Jan 2002

European Courts, American Rights: Extradition And Prison Conditions, Daniel J. Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article discusses the rising number of extradition requests by the United States, the common grounds for denial of extradition, and the controversies that such denials have aroused. Part II examines Soering v. United Kingdom against this background and analyzes its scholarly reception, influence on international and foreign jurisprudence, and lack of effect in the United States. Part III explores the implications of SOERING for defenses to extradition based on prison conditions: whether prison conditions in the United States could conceivably rise to the level of a human rights violation, whether the European Court of Human Rights …


Punitive Damages: How Jurors Fail To Promote Efficiency, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 2002

Punitive Damages: How Jurors Fail To Promote Efficiency, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Evidence of corporate risk-cost balancing often leads to inefficient punitive damages awards, suggesting that jurors fail to base their decision making on principles of economic efficiency. In this Article, Professor Viscusi presents the results of two experiments regarding jury behavior and punitive damages. In the first experiment, Professor Viscusi found that mock jurors punish companies for balancing risk against cost, although award levels vary depending on how the economic analysis is presented at trial. The results of the second experiment suggested that mock jurors are unwilling or unable to follow a set of model jury instructions designed to generate efficient …


Farmland Stewardship: Can Ecosystems Stand Any More Of It?, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2002

Farmland Stewardship: Can Ecosystems Stand Any More Of It?, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Second in my series of articles on farming and environmental policy, this article examines farmland stewardship rhetoric in light of the reality of extensive agricultural exemptions from environmental regulation.


The Law And Large Numbers, Paul H. Edelman Jan 2002

The Law And Large Numbers, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Can mathematics be used to inform legal analysis? This is not a ridiculous question. Law has certain superficial resem­blances to mathematics. One might view the Constitution and various statutes as providing "axioms" for a deductive legal sys­tem. From these axioms judges deduce "theorems" consisting of interpretation of these axioms in certain situations. Often these theorems are built on previously "proven" theorems, i.e. earlier decisions of the court. Of course some of the axioms might change, and occasionally a theorem that was once true becomes false; the former is a common feature of mathematics, the latter, though theoretically not possible in …


Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damages Awards: Reply To Richard Lempert, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 2002

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damages Awards: Reply To Richard Lempert, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Richard Lempert, a Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Michigan criticized our recent article on judge and jury performance of a punitive damage judgment task, calling it a "failure of a social science case for change." Professor Lempert's depiction of our research is confusing and incorrect. However, because we believe a reading of only the Lempert critique can lead to a substantial misunderstanding of our research and its implications, we have written a reply.


Safety At Any Price, W. Kip Viscusi, Ted Gayer Jan 2002

Safety At Any Price, W. Kip Viscusi, Ted Gayer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

After three decades of experience with extensive government regulation and oversight of health, safety and environmental matters, we have reason to believe that those measures have largely failed to fulfill their initial promise, but many of the initial promises were infeasible goals of a "zero-risk" society. Economic findings with respect to risk-risk tradeoffs highlight the fallacies inherent in government's zero-risk mentality. Agencies that make an unbounded financial commitment to safety frequently are sacrificing individual lives. There continues to be major opportunities to improve regulatory performance by targeting existing inefficiencies and using market mechanisms (rather than strict command-and-control mechanisms) to achieve …