Law Commons^™

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …

Genealogies Of Risk: Searching For Safety, 1930s-1970s, William Boyd

Publications

Health, safety, and environmental regulation in the United States are saturated with risk thinking. It was not always so, and it may not be so in the future. But today, the formal, quantitative approach to risk provides much of the basis for regulation in these fields, a development that seems quite natural, even necessary. This particular approach, while it drew on conceptual and technical developments that had been underway for decades, achieved prominence during a relatively short timeframe; roughly, between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s--a time of hard looks and regulatory reform. Prior to this time, formal conceptions of …

Under Attack: Terrorism Risk Insurance Regulation, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Scholarly debates over the September 11th attacks focus predominantly on high-profile issues, such as torture, preventive detention, interrogation, privacy, and surveillance. These debates have overshadowed the equally important and far-reaching issue of terrorism risk insurance, which not only involves billions of dollars, but provides powerful incentives to keep us safe. Developing a sound understanding of the market for terrorism risk insurance is essential to guiding the difficult determination of the appropriate balance between private and public responsibility for preventing and (when necessary) compensating for terrorism.

The attacks of September 11th represented one of the costliest insurance events in American history. …

Crises, Congress, And Cognitive Biases: A Critical Examination Of Food And Drug Legislation In The United States, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

No abstract provided.

Preferences And Rational Choice: New Perspectives And Legal Implications: Introduction, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter H. Huang

Publications

No abstract provided.

Homicide On Holiday: Prosecutorial Discretion, Popular Culture, And The Boundaries Of The Criminal Law, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This article discusses prosecutors' discretion to press criminal charges against individuals who cause death during recreational activities. Based on newspaper sources, published opinions, and unpublished materials from cases that resulted in plea bargains, Homicide on Holiday continues the author's exploration of the relationship between the American public, criminal prosecutors, and the nature of the prosecutors' public role. It shows that, despite popular culture's glorification of risk and a nationwide trend in tort law toward sheltering sports co-participants from civil negligence liability, an exhilarating trip down a ski slope is increasingly likely to land a skier in jail if he collides …