Law Commons^™

Money That Costs Too Much: Regulating Financial Incentives, Kristen Underhill

Faculty Scholarship

Money may not corrupt. But should we worry if it corrodes? Legal scholars in a range of fields have expressed concern about “motivational crowding-out,” a process by which offering financial rewards for good behavior may undermine laudable social motivations, like professionalism or civic duty. Disquiet about the motivational impacts of incentives has now extended to health law, employment law, tax, torts, contracts, criminal law, property, and beyond. In some cases, the fear of crowding-out has inspired concrete opposition to innovative policies that marshal incentives to change individual behavior. But to date, our fears about crowding-out have been unfocused and amorphous; …

Reforming Institutions: The Judicial Function In Bankruptcy And Public Law Litigation, Kathleen G. Noonan, Jonathan C. Lipson, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Public law litigation (PLL) is among the most important and controversial types of dispute that courts face. These civil class actions seek to reform public agencies such as police departments, prison systems, and child welfare agencies that have failed to meet basic statutory or constitutional obligations. They are controversial because critics assume that judicial intervention is categorically undemocratic or beyond judicial expertise.

This Article reveals flaws in these criticisms by comparing the judicial function in PLL to that in corporate bankruptcy, where the value and legitimacy of judicial intervention are better understood and more accepted. Our comparison shows that judicial …

The Fortification Of Inequality: Constitutional Doctrine And The Political Economy, Kate Andrias

Faculty Scholarship

As Parts I and II of this Essay elaborate, the examination yields three observations of relevance to constitutional law more generally: First, judge-made constitutional doctrine, though by no means the primary cause of rising inequality, has played an important role in reinforcing and exacerbating it. Judges have acquiesced to legislatively structured economic inequality, while also restricting the ability of legislatures to remedy it. Second, while economic inequality has become a cause célèbre only in the last few years, much of the constitutional doctrine that has contributed to its flourishing is longstanding. Moreover, for several decades, even the Court’s more liberal …

Trump As A Constitutional Failure, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

The election of Donald Trump as president represented a failure of American politics. Trump is a serial liar, a sexual predator, deeply conflicted financially, hostile to bedrock democratic institutions such as free press, and ignorant of even the broad brushstrokes of important policy matters. The best evidence suggests that he is a white nationalist, a plutocrat, and a professional con artist, dangerously attracted to corrupt and incompetent sycophants, self-obsessed and aggressive to the point of psychopathy, and otherwise temperamentally unfit to be in charge of the world’s largest military and nuclear arsenal. There is some evidence that Trump or members …

Restrictive Covenants, Employee Training, And The Limits Of Transaction-Cost Analysis, Gillian Lester

Faculty Scholarship

Restrictive covenants are an increasingly common feature of employment, used across a wide range of industries, occupations, and employees. In its most common form, a restrictive covenant prohibits an employee from competing with the employer within a certain geographic area fora specified period of time after departure, usually one or two years. Sometimes these clauses are drawn more narrowly, proscribing specific activities such as continued dealings with former customers. Regardless of scope, the typical remedy when an employee breaches such a covenant is injunctive relief.

A substantial literature within law and economics debates the merits of restrictive covenants from an …

Look Who's Extrapolating: A Reply To Hoffmann, Valerie West, Jeffery Fagan, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In late March, a reporter called with news of a pirated copy of Professor Joseph Hoffinann's soon-to-be-published "attack" on our study, A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995. Did we care to comment? Obtaining our own copy revealed that Professor Hoffmann's fusillade missed its mark (he misstates what we did) and boomeranged (his mischaracterizations of our analysis accurately describe his own). We do care to comment, and Hoffmann and the Indiana Law Journal have graciously let us do so.

Hoffmann's main claim is that we "extrapolated" the 68% rate of reversible error we reported for capital verdicts …

Rights And Politics, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honour to join you today in celebrating Professor Jerome Hall. Professor Hall's work was ahead of its time. I did not know him, but his independence of mind and his spirited devotion to scholarship were striking in all I heard and read. Professor Hall's fame was at its height when I was beginning my research into the philosophy of law. And his name stood out as among the most distinguished American jurisprudential scholars. It stood out for his good sense, balanced judgment, and strong-minded convictions. His Foundations of Jurisprudence is thoroughly resistant to fashion. It is an …

Rethinking The Class Action: A Policy Primer On Reform, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Today, virtually everyone has a proposal for "reforming" class action litigation but both consensus and coherence are lacking. Some proposals are bluntly restrictive. For example, the Reagan Administration would reduce attorney's fees, place a ceiling on product liability, and partially repeal treble damage statutes. In the same vein, the United States Supreme Court has shown itself parsimonious on the question of fee awards, by authorizing fee waivers, approving offers of settlement that seemingly permit fee shifting against the plaintiff's attorney, and curtailing the traditional bases on which a fee award may be enhanced. Other proposals have offered essentially neutral procedural …