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Can The Dark Arts Of The Dismal Science Shed Light On The Empirical Reality Of Civil Procedure?, Jonah B. Gelbach
Can The Dark Arts Of The Dismal Science Shed Light On The Empirical Reality Of Civil Procedure?, Jonah B. Gelbach
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Litigation involves human beings, who are likely to be motivated to pursue their interests as they understand them. Empirical civil procedure researchers must take this fact seriously if we are to adequately characterize the effects of policy changes. To make this point concrete, I first step outside the realm of civil procedure and illustrate the importance of accounting for human agency in empirical research. I use the canonical problem of demand estimation in economics to show how what I call the “urn approach” to empirical work fails to uncover important empirical relationships by disregarding behavioral aspects of human action. I …
The Limits Of Preference-Based Legal Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Limits Of Preference-Based Legal Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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America's political institutions are built on the principle that individual preferences are central to the formation of policy. The two most important institutions in our system, democracy and the market, make individual preference decisive in the formation of policy and the allocation of resources. American legal traditions have always reflected the centrality of preference in policy determination. In private law, the importance of preference is reflected mainly in the development and persistence of common-law rules, which are intended to facilitate private transactions over legal entitlements. In constitutional law, the centrality of preference is reflected in the high position we assign …