Law Commons^™

The Influence Of Law And Economics Scholarship On Contract Law: Impressions Twenty-Five Years Later, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

This is an update of a work done in conjunction with a contract law conference 25 years ago. My specific assignment was to assess the impact of law and economics scholarship on contract law. I responded by conducting an empirical study of judicial citations to selected law and economics works in order to ascertain the extent to which judges seemed to be relying on the teachings of law and economics. In effect, the effort was part of a general question that concerns all law professors: Does scholarship matter? I have repeated the study with respect to the scholarship sample selected …

Explaining The Importance Of Public Choice For Law, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

The next generation of government officials, business leaders and members of civil society likely will draw from the current pool of law school students. These students often lack a foundation of the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to understand law's interplay with government. This highlights the importance of public choice analysis. By framing issues through a public choice lens, these students will learn the dynamics of effective decision-making within various institutional settings. Filling the void of how to explain the decision-making process of institutional actors in legal settings is Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law by Maxwell Stearns and …

Law And Development: The Way Forward Or Just Stuck In The Same Place?, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

This Essay does three things. First, it provides an overview of Law and Development issues. Second, it responds to other pieces in the symposium "The Future of Law and Development". Third, it suggests that to measure success, Law and Development needs clearer goals.

Globalization Of Law Firms: A Survey Of The Literature And A Research Agenda For Further Study, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

The international expansion of law firms plays a critical role in understanding the business of law and the nature of globalization. This article responds to two articles on law firm expansion in the Indiana University - Bloomington Law School symposium on the Globalization of the Legal Profession. The article utilizes management studies' theoretical work on internationalization and applies it to law firm expansion to explain law firm strategic decision-making. The author creates a six part taxonomy for types of law firm expansion and provides a snapshot of the increasing U.S./U.K. dominance of capital markets, corporate and mergers and acquisitions legal …

Antitrust, Institutions, And Merger Control, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

This Article makes two primary contributions to the antitrust literature. First, it identifies the dynamic interrelationship across antitrust institutions. Second, it provides new empirical evidence from practitioner surveys to explore how the dynamic institutional interrelationship plays out in the area of merger control. This Article provides a descriptive, analytical overview of the various institutions to better frame the larger institutional interrelations for a comparative institutional analysis. In the next Part it examines mergers as a case study of how one might apply antitrust institutional analysis across these different kinds and levels of antitrust institutions. The Article utilizes both quantitative and …

Los Sindicatos, La Convención Colectiva Y El Derecho A La Pensión En El Marco Constitucional Actual, Fernando Castillo Cadena

Fernando Castillo Cadena

No abstract provided.

Bramble Bush Revisited: Llewellyn, The Great Depression, And The First Law School Crisis, 1929-1939, Anders Walker

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

A Good Lawyer, Brigham A. Fordham

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Historical Framework For Reviving Constitutional Protection For Property And Contract Rights , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Freedom To Harm: The Lasting Legacy Of The Laissez-Faire Revival, By Thomas O. Mcgarity, Joel A. Mintz

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Simpler: The Future Of Government, By Cass Sunstein, Bernard W. Bell

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Confronting The Peppercorn Settlement In Merger Litigation: An Empirical Analysis And A Proposal For Reform, Jill E. Fisch, Sean J. Griffith, Steven M. Davidoff

Steven Davidoff Solomon

Shareholder litigation challenging corporate mergers is ubiquitous, with the likelihood of a shareholder suit exceeding 90%. The value of this litigation, however, is questionable. The vast majority of merger cases settle for nothing more than supplemental disclosures in the merger proxy statement. The attorneys that bring these lawsuits are compensated for their efforts with a court-awarded fee. This leads critics to charge that merger litigation benefits only the lawyers who bring the claims, not the shareholders they represent. In response, defenders of merger litigation argue that the lawsuits serve a useful oversight function and that the improved disclosures that result …

Nuisance, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This entry sets out the law and the economic theory of nuisance. Nuisance law serves a regulatory function: it induces actors to choose the socially preferred level of an activity by imposing liability when the externalized costs of the activity are substantially greater than the externalized benefits or not reciprocal to other background external costs. Proximate cause doctrine plays a role in supplementing nuisance law.

Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …

Rejecting The Legal Process Theory Joker: Bill Nelson's Scholarship On Judge Edward Weinfeld And Justice Byron White, Brad Snyder

Chicago-Kent Law Review

My contribution to this tribute places Bill Nelson’s scholarship about Judge Edward Weinfeld and Justice Byron White within several contexts. It is a personal history of Nelson the law student, law clerk, and young scholar; an intellectual history of legal theory since the 1960s; an examination of the influence of legal theory on Nelson’s scholarship based on his writings about Weinfeld and White; and an example of how legal historians contend with the subject of judicial reputation. Nelson was one of many former Warren Court and Burger Court clerks who joined the professoriate and rejected the legal process theory that …

Book Review, Economic Foundations Of International Law, By Eric A. Posner And Alan O. Sykes, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

This essay reviews Eric Posner’s and Alan Sykes’ Economic Foundations of International Law. In the last ten years or so, economic analysis of international law has established itself as a mainstream discipline, providing insights into why international law is structured as it is, the conditions under which it is effective, and how it might be improved. Economic Foundations consolidates and extends these insights. As such, the book is destined to be a starting place for economic analysis of international law. The book is divided into five parts. Part I provides an introduction to international law and the tools necessary to …

Anti-Waste, Michael Pappas

Michael Pappas

It may be a bad idea to waste resources, but is it illegal? Legally speaking, what does “waste” even mean? Though the concept may appear completely subjective, this Article builds a framework for understanding how the law identifies and addresses waste. Drawing upon property and natural resource doctrines, the Article finds that the law selects from a menu of five specific, and sometimes competing, societal values to define waste. The values are: 1) economic efficiency, 2) human flourishing, 3) concern for future generations, 4) stability and consistency, and 5) ecological concerns. The law recognizes waste in terms of one or …

The Worst Test Of Truth: The "Marketplace Of Ideas" As Faulty Metaphor, Thomas W. Joo

Thomas W Joo

In his famous dissent in Abrams v. United States, Justice Holmes proclaimed that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” This Article critiques the basic argument against speech regulation that has developed from the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor: that speech should be “free” because markets are “free,” and because free markets produce “truth.” These assertions about markets are taken for granted, but they portray markets and market regulation inaccurately; thus economic markets provide a poor analogy for the deregulation of speech.

First Amendment jurisprudence invokes the …

Legal Education In Pakistan: The Domination Of Practitioners And The "Critically Endagered" Academic, Osama Siddique

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Professor And The Judge: Introducing First-Year Students To The Law In Context, Michael B. Mushlin, Lisa Margaret Smith

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

India's State Of Legal Education: The Role From Nlsiu To Jindal, Deepa Badrinarayana

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Ronald Coase: A Legend Misunderstood, Philip L. Fraietta

Res Gestae

No abstract provided.

Stuck: Fictions, Failures And Market Talk As Race Talk, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

ClassCrits is a network of scholars and activists interested in critical analysis of law, the economy, and inequality. We aim to better integrate the rich diversity of economic methods and theories into law by exploring and engaging a variety of heterodox economic theories; including reviving, from the margins and shadowy past, discussions of class relations and their possible relevance to the contemporary context.

As a participant in the ClassCrits VI conference entitled, “Stuck in Forward: Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political”, I sat there at the end of the first day and puzzled over the fact that our …

Measuring Benchmark Damages In Antitrust Litigation, Justin Mccrary, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Faculty Scholarship

We compare the two dominant approaches to estimation of benchmark damages in antitrust litigation, the forecasting approach and the dummy variable approach. We give conditions under which the two approaches are equivalent and present the results of a small simulation study.

Assessing The Insurance Role Of Tort Liability After Calabresi, Joni Hersch, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Calabresi’s theory of tort liability (1961) as a risk distribution mechanism established insurance as an objective of tort liability. Calabresi’s risk-spreading concept of tort has provided the impetus for much of the subsequent development of tort liability doctrine, including risk-utility analysis and strict liability. Calabresi’s analysis remains a powerful basis for modern tort liability. However, high transactions costs, correlated risks, catastrophic losses, mass toxic torts, shifts in liability rules over time, noneconomic damages, and punitive damages affect the functioning of tort liability as an insurance mechanism. Despite some limitations of tort liability as insurance, tort compensation serves both a compensatory …

The Fair Use Doctrine: Markets, Market Failure And Rights Of Use, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Markets are most acceptable when they serve efficiency and other goals. It is only under transaction-costless conditions of perfect knowledge, flawless and cost-free enforcement, full monetization, and instantaneous ability to organize and negotiate, that markets are guaranteed to generate efficient outcomes. And even then, markets could fall short as social tools, because goals other than allocative efficiency may fail to be met.

Anti-Waste, Michael Pappas

Faculty Scholarship

It may be a bad idea to waste resources, but is it illegal? Legally speaking, what does “waste” even mean? Though the concept may appear completely subjective, this Article builds a framework for understanding how the law identifies and addresses waste.

Drawing upon property and natural resource doctrines, the Article finds that the law selects from a menu of five specific, and sometimes competing, societal values to define waste. The values are: 1) economic efficiency, 2) human flourishing, 3) concern for future generations, 4) stability and consistency, and 5) ecological concerns. The law recognizes waste in terms of one or …

Limits Of Procedural Choice Of Law, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Commercial parties have long enjoyed significant autonomy in questions of substantive law. However, litigants do not have anywhere near the same amount of freedom to decide procedural matters. Instead, parties in litigation are generally considered to be subject to the procedural law of the forum court.

Although this particular conflict of laws rule has been in place for many years, a number of recent developments have challenged courts and commentators to consider whether and to what extent procedural rules should be considered mandatory in nature. If procedural rules are not mandatory but are instead merely “sticky” defaults, then it may …

Public Utility And The Low-Carbon Future, William Boyd

Publications

Substantial reductions in global power sector emissions will be needed by midcentury to avoid significant disruption of the climate system. Achieving these reductions will require greatly increased levels of financing, technological innovation, and policy reform. In the United States, the scale and complexity of the overall challenge have raised important questions regarding prevailing regulatory and business models, with much scrutiny directed at the traditional practice of public utility regulation. Recognizing the many valid criticisms leveled against public utility regulation and the important questions raised about the viability of traditional utility business models, particularly in the face of substantial growth in …

The Law And Economics Of Stop-And-Frisk, David S. Abrams

All Faculty Scholarship

The relevant economic and legal research relating to police use of stop-and-frisk has largely been distinct. There is much to be gained by taking an interdisciplinary approach. This Essay emphasizes some of the challenges faced by those seeking to evaluate the efficacy and legality of stop-and-frisk, and suggests some ways forward and areas of exploration for future research.