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Full-Text Articles in Law
New Hampshire Juvenile Sex Trafficking Survivor Urges Representatives To Vote Against Decriminalized Prostitution, Darlene Pawlik, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
New Hampshire Juvenile Sex Trafficking Survivor Urges Representatives To Vote Against Decriminalized Prostitution, Darlene Pawlik, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
Sex Industry Advocates Aim To Decriminalize Prostitution In New Hampshire, Kelly Roy-Williams, Lisa Thompson, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Sex Industry Advocates Aim To Decriminalize Prostitution In New Hampshire, Kelly Roy-Williams, Lisa Thompson, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Sean Farhang
In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …
Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova
Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova
Saule T. Omarova
The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …
Through The Lens Of Innovation, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Through The Lens Of Innovation, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Mirit Eyal-Cohen
The legal system constantly follows the footsteps of innovation and attempts to discourage its migration overseas. Yet, present legal rules that inform and explain entrepreneurial circumstances lack a core understanding of the concept of innovation. By its nature, law imposes order. It provides rules, remedies, and classifications that direct behavior in a consistent manner. Innovation turns on the contrary. It entails making creative judgments about the unknown. It involves adapting to disarray. It thrives on deviations as opposed to traditional causation. This Article argues that these differences matter. It demonstrates that current laws lock entrepreneurs into inefficient legal routes. Using …
Lessons In Fiscal Activism, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Lessons In Fiscal Activism, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Mirit Eyal-Cohen
This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli but received a dramatically different treatment. The economically inferior rule survived while its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the causes are both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …
The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Mirit Eyal-Cohen
This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli, but received a dramatically different treatment. The less efficient or economically inferior survived. Its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the reason is both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.
The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan
The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
Don’T Be Silly: Lawmakers “Rarely” Read Legislation And Oftentimes Don’T Understand It . . . But That’S Okay, Brian Christopher Jones
Don’T Be Silly: Lawmakers “Rarely” Read Legislation And Oftentimes Don’T Understand It . . . But That’S Okay, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), the reading and understanding of legislation became one of the most controversial issues mentioned in Congress and throughout the media. This led many to state that lawmakers should “read the bill,” and led one academic to propose a read-the-bill rule for Congress, where legislators would not vote or vote “no” if they had not read the full text of the legislation. My essay argues that in contemporary legislatures such proposals are unfeasible, and would ultimately produce lower quality legislation. In doing so, the piece uses interviews with legislative …
Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum
Angela Goodrum
No abstract provided.
Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson
Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson
Dru Stevenson
Between the Civil War and World War II, every state and the federal government shifted toward codified versions of their statutes. Academia has so far ignored the systemic effects of this dramatic change. For example, the consensus view in the academic literature about rules and standards has been that precise rules present higher enactment costs for legislatures than would general standards, while vague standards present higher information costs for courts and citizens than do rules. Systematic codification – featuring hierarchical format and numbering, topical arrangement, and cross-references – inverts this relationship, lowering transaction costs for legislatures and increasing information costs …
Dodd-Frank Act And Remittances To Post-Conflict Countries: The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again, Raymond Natter
Dodd-Frank Act And Remittances To Post-Conflict Countries: The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again, Raymond Natter
Raymond Natter
The Dodd-Frank Act established a new Federal framework for the regulation of international remittance payments that originate in the U.S. However, the statute and implementing regulations may have the unintended consequence of disrupting the flow of remittance funds to post-conflict nations.
Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Gambling, And Guns: The Synergistic Constitutional Effects, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Gambling, And Guns: The Synergistic Constitutional Effects, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
David B Kopel
In this Article, we discuss the synergistic relationship between the wars‖ on drugs, guns, alcohol, sex, and gambling, and how that relationship has helped illegitimately increase the power of the federal government over the past century. The Constitution never granted Congress the general police power‖ to legislate on health, safety, welfare, and morals; the police power was reserved to the States. Yet over the last century, federal laws against guns, alcohol, gambling, and some types of sex have encroached on the police powers traditionally reserved to the states.
Congress‘s infringement of the States‘ powers over the health, safety, welfare, and …
Book Review: 'Living Legislation' By Jeffery A. Jenkins & Eric M. Patashnik (Eds), Brian Christopher Jones
Book Review: 'Living Legislation' By Jeffery A. Jenkins & Eric M. Patashnik (Eds), Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
No abstract provided.
Workers’ Rights: Rethinking Protective Labor Legislation, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Workers’ Rights: Rethinking Protective Labor Legislation, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
This paper focuses on a few directions in which protective labor legislation might be expanded in the United States over the next decade and the implications of expansion in each area for labor markets. Specifically, it addresses the areas of hours of work, unjust dismissal, comparable worth, and plant closings. In each case, the discussion stresses the need to be explicit about how private markets have failed, the need for empirical evidence to test such market failure claims, the need for economic analysis of potential unintended side effects of policy changes, and the existing empirical estimates of the likely magnitudes …
Book Review: Edward L. Glaeser, Triumph Of The City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, And Happier (The Penguin Press 2011), David J. Reiss
David J Reiss
It is always a bit unnerving to read someone else’s love letters, but even more so, when you have the same object of desire. Edward Glaeser’s TRIUMPH OF THE CITY is a love letter to cities and to New York City in particular. Glaeser provides a theoertical framework of the city, arguing that “Cities are the absence of physical space between people and companies. They are proximity, density, closeness.”
Glaeser prescribes three simple rules to protect the vitality of the urban environment: First, cities should replace the current lengthy and uncertain permitting process with a simple system of fees. Second, …
Reducing The Drug War's Damage To Government Budgets, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
Reducing The Drug War's Damage To Government Budgets, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
David B Kopel
This Article examines ways that governments can mitigate the economic damage caused by the drug war. Part I details four specific legal reforms enacted in Colorado, which aim to reduce the problems of over-criminalization: Requiring a fiscal note for the creation of new statutory crimes; reducing drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor; narrowing the scope of 'three strikes' laws, and; adjusting old sentences in light of new laws.
Part II explores the fiscal benefits of ending prohibition, such as reduced law enforcement costs and substantially increased tax revenues.
Part III analyzes the conflict between congressionally-imposed prohibition, and state …
The Great Gun Control War Of The Twentieth Century--And Its Lessons For Gun Laws Today, David B. Kopel
The Great Gun Control War Of The Twentieth Century--And Its Lessons For Gun Laws Today, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
A movement to ban handguns began in the 1920s in the Northeast, led by the conservative business establishment. In response, the National Rifle Association began to get involved in politics, and was able to defeat handgun prohibition. Gun control and gun rights became the subjects of intense political, social, and cultural battles for much of the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st.
Often, the battles were a clash of absolutes: One side contended that there was absolutely no right to arms, that defensive gun ownership must be prohibited, and that gun ownership for sporting purposes could be, …
Drafting Proper Short Bill Titles: Do States Have The Answer?, Brian Christopher Jones
Drafting Proper Short Bill Titles: Do States Have The Answer?, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
No abstract provided.
Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson
Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson
David B Kopel
In Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, we demonstrated that the individual mandate’s forced participation in commercial transactions cannot be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as the Clause was interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland. Professor Andrew Koppelman’s response, Bad News for Everybody, wrongly conflates that argument with a wide range of interpretative and substantive positions that are not logically entailed by taking seriously the requirement that laws enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause must be incidental to an enumerated power. His response is thus largely unresponsive to our actual arguments.
Why Do Judges Read Statutes?, Alexander Volokh
Why Do Judges Read Statutes?, Alexander Volokh
Alexander Volokh
The standard view that "statutory interpretation matters" -- that different methods can "lead to" different results -- is hard to square with the standard rational-choice account of judicial decisionmaking. Indeed, under the standard model, it is not obvious why a judge should bother to even read the statute.
I show, within the rational-choice account, how the judge can benefit from reading the statute when the preferences of legislators are uncertain. Doing so shows the judge what policy the legislators agreed to in the past, which gives him clues as to legislators' preferences today. Moreover, different assumptions about how the legislature …
Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: Creatures Of Regulatory Privilege, David J. Reiss
Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: Creatures Of Regulatory Privilege, David J. Reiss
David J Reiss
This book chapter addresses the appropriate role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered, privately owned mortgage finance companies, in the United States housing finance sector. The federal government recently placed Fannie and Freddie in conservatorship. These two massive companies are profit-driven, but as government-sponsored enterprises they also have a government-mandated mission to provide liquidity and stability to the United States mortgage market and to achieve certain affordable housing goals. How the two companies should exit their conservatorship has implications that reach throughout the global financial markets and are of key importance to the future of American housing finance …
The Citizens Were Heard, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
The Citizens Were Heard, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
Victory In Rhode Island, Donna M. Hughes Dr., Michael Horowitz
Victory In Rhode Island, Donna M. Hughes Dr., Michael Horowitz
Donna M. Hughes
Speak Your Voice On Prostitution Bill, Donna L. Landry, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Speak Your Voice On Prostitution Bill, Donna L. Landry, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
The Obstructionism Of Senator Paul Jabour, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
The Obstructionism Of Senator Paul Jabour, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
Action Alert For Senate: Comments On Human Trafficking Bills, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Action Alert For Senate: Comments On Human Trafficking Bills, Donna M. Hughes Dr.
Donna M. Hughes
Testimony On Human Trafficking Bill, Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee, Donna M. Hughes Dr.