Law Commons^™

Historical Property Rights, Sociality, And The Emergence Of Impersonal Exchange In Long-Distance Trade, Vernon Smith, Erik Kimbrough, Bart Wilson

Vernon L. Smith

This laboratory experiment explores the extent to which impersonal exchange emerges from personal exchange with opportunities for long-distance trade. We design a three-commodity production and exchange economy in which agents in three geographically separated villages must develop multilateral exchange networks to import a third good only available abroad. For treatments, we induce two distinct institutional histories to investigate how past experience with property rights affect the evolution of specialization and exchange. We find that a history of un-enforced property rights hinders our subjects' ability to develop the requisite personal social arrangements necessary to support specialization and effectively exploit impersonal long-distance …

Exchange And Specializiation As A Discovery Process, Vernon Smith, Sean Crockett, Bart Wilson

Vernon L. Smith

In this paper we study the performance of an economic environment that can support specialization if the participants implement and develop some system of exchange. We define a closed economy in which the participants must discover the ability to exchange, implement it, and ascertain what they are comparatively advantaged in producing. Many people demonstrate the ability to find comparative advantage, capture gains from trade, and effectively choose production that is consistent with the choices of others. However, many do not become specialists, even though full efficiency can only be achieved if everyone does so. Near-full efficiency does occur bilaterally in …

The Media's Ancien Regime, Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt

Columbia School of Journalism is undertaking a major change via the introduction of a second graduate degree program. Dean Nicholas Leman believes that decline in credibility of major media can be arrested via the teaching to journalists of power skills, e.g. regression analysis, that equip them to provide readers/listeners with more than an account of competing narratives. The attempt is doomed, according to Hewitt, not because of journalists' inability to learn new skills, but because of a uniformity of ideological beliefs that inevitably distort stories and thus diminish credibility in a way that cannot be hidden from a networked world. …

The Propriety Of A Judge's Failure To Recuse When Being Considered For Another Position, Ronald Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

Some commentators have argued that Judge John Roberts, recently confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, violated a federal statute because of his failure to recuse himself in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which a panel of the D.C. Circuit including Roberts recently decided. Several Senators raised the issue of Judge Roberts' failure to recuse himself during the course of his confirmation hearings, but the Judge did not comment on it because the case was still pending.

Any proposed "jobs recusal" rule, which would require a judge to recuse himself in such circumstances, imposes costs that …

Mental Disorders And The Law, Richard Redding

Richard E. Redding

This chapter provides an introduction to the major classes of mental disorder and the ways in which they are salient to selected aspects of American criminal and civil law, focusing particularly on criminal law issues.

The Brain-Disordered Defendant: Neuroscience And Legal Insanity In The Twenty-First Century, Richard Redding

Richard E. Redding

Brain-damaged defendants are seen everyday in American courtrooms, and in many cases, their criminal behavior appears to be the product of extremely poor judgment and self-control. Some have a disorder in the frontal lobes, the area of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse control. Yet because defendants suffering from frontal lobe dysfunction usually understand the difference between right and wrong, they are unable to avail themselves of the only insanity defense available in many states, a defense based on the narrow McNaghten test. "Irresistible impulse" (or "control") tests, on the other hand, provide an insanity defense to those who …