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Full-Text Articles in Law

Heuristics And Biases At The Bargaining Table, Chris Guthrie, Russell Korobkin Jan 2004

Heuristics And Biases At The Bargaining Table, Chris Guthrie, Russell Korobkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this essay, written for a symposium on The Emerging Interdisciplinary Cannon of Negotiation, we examine the role of heuristics in negotiation from two vantage points. First, we identify the way in which some common heuristics are likely to influence the negotiator's decision-making processes. Namely, we discuss anchoring and adjustment, availability, self-serving evaluations, framing, the status quo bias, contrast effects, and reactive devaluation. Understanding these common heuristics and how they can cause negotiators' judgments and choices to deviate from the normative model can enable negotiators to reorient their behavior so it more closely aligns with the normative model or, alternatively, …


Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Seven law school faculty members and one practicing attorney recently developed and taught a wholly new kind of law course based on an already published case study, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, by Barry Werth, an investigative reporter who spent several years researching to write the book. Damages, an in-depth account of a medical malpractice case, presents the perspectives of the injured family, the defendant physician, the lawyers, and the three mediators. In this Symposium Introduction, the authors provide a summary of Werth's book, explain why they decided to create a course based on his …


Induced Litigation, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Induced Litigation, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If "justice delayed" is "justice denied,"justice is often denied in American courts. Delay in the courts is a "ceaseless and unremitting problem of modem civil justice" that "has an irreparable effect on both plaintiffs and defendants." To combat this seemingly intractable problem, judges and court administrators routinely clamor for additional judicial resources to enable them to manage their dockets more "effectively and efficiently." By building new courthouses and adding new judgeships, a court should be able to manage its caseload more efficiently. Trial judges should be able to hold motion hearings, host settlement conferences, and conduct trials in a timely …


The Globalization (Americanization?) Of Executive Pay, Randall Thomas, Brian R. Cheffins Jan 2004

The Globalization (Americanization?) Of Executive Pay, Randall Thomas, Brian R. Cheffins

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the United States, the remuneration packages of top executives are characterized by a strong emphasis on pay-for-performance and by a highly lucrative "upside." There is much discussion of the possibility that executive pay practices will globalize in accordance with this pattern. This Article assesses whether such convergence is likely to occur. After surveying briefly the key components of managerial remuneration and after examining the essential elements of the "U.S. pay paradigm," the Article considers market-oriented dynamics that could constitute a "global compensation imperative." These include wider dispersion of share ownership, more cross-border hiring of executives, growing international merger and …


The Increasing Role Of Empirical Research In Corporate Law Scholarship, Randall Thomas Jan 2004

The Increasing Role Of Empirical Research In Corporate Law Scholarship, Randall Thomas

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This is a review of Professor Mark Roe's book, The Political Determinants of Corporate Governance. It seeks to accomplish two goals. First, in Part I, it summarizes the theoretical arguments made in Political Determinants and critiques the empirical support marshaled by Professor Roe in support of them. Then, in Part II, it develops an alternative model that could be used to test jointly Professor Roe's and LLSV's theory about the determinants of corporate governance. Finally, it offers a few concluding remarks about the future of empirical legal scholarship.


The New Look Of Shareholder Litigation: Acquisition-Oriented Class Actions, Randall Thomas, Robert B. Thompson Jan 2004

The New Look Of Shareholder Litigation: Acquisition-Oriented Class Actions, Randall Thomas, Robert B. Thompson

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Shareholder litigation is the most frequently maligned legal check on managerial misconduct within corporations. Derivative lawsuits and federal securities class actions are portrayed as slackers in debates over how best to control the managerial agency costs created by the separation of ownership and control in the modern corporation. In each instance, early hopes these suits would effectively monitor managerial misconduct have been replaced with concerns about the size of the litigation agency costs of such representative litigation, which can arise when a self-selected plaintiff's attorney and her client that are appointed to pursue the claims of an entire class of …


The Public And Private Faces Of Derivative Lawsuits, Randall S. Thomas, Robert B. Thompson Jan 2004

The Public And Private Faces Of Derivative Lawsuits, Randall S. Thomas, Robert B. Thompson

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Derivative suits, long the principal vehicle for discussions about representative litigation in corporate and securities law, now share the stage with younger cousins - securities fraud class actions and state law fiduciary duty class actions. At the same time alternative governance vehicles - independent directors, auditors and other reforms that have followed in the wake of Enron - potentially diminish the relative place of litigation such as derivative suits. This article presents data from all derivative suits filed in Delaware over a two-year period. We find a relatively small number, certainly as compared to fiduciary class action and securities fraud …


From Smokestack To Suv: The Individual As Regulated Entity In The New Era Of Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh Jan 2004

From Smokestack To Suv: The Individual As Regulated Entity In The New Era Of Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A debate between advocates of command and control regulation and advocates of economic incentives has dominated environmental legal scholarship over the last three decades. Both sides in the debate implicitly embrace the premise that regulatory measures should be directed almost exclusively at large industrial polluters. This Article asserts that for many pollutants the premise is no longer supportable, and that much of the focus of regulation in the future should turn to individuals and households. Examining a wide range of empirical data, the Article presents the first profile of individual behavior as a source of pollution. The profile demonstrates that …


The Myth Of What Is Inevitable Under Ecosystem Management: A Response To Pardy, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

The Myth Of What Is Inevitable Under Ecosystem Management: A Response To Pardy, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, second in a five-part dialogue appearing in the Pace ELR, responds to Professor Bruce Pardy's initial evaluation of ecosystem management. I defend ecosystem management, arguing it is not directed at changing nature as Pardy suggests.


Beyond Blakely, Nancy J. King, Susan Riva Klein Jan 2004

Beyond Blakely, Nancy J. King, Susan Riva Klein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Federal criminal sentencing in the wake of Blakely v. Washington is, to put it charitably, a mess. In holding that Blakely's sentence under the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines was imposed in a manner inconsistent with the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, the decision threatens the operation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the presumptive sentencing systems in fourteen states. In Parts I and II of this article, we address how Blakely has affected the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and how assistant U.S. attorneys, federal public defenders, and district and appellate court judges might proceed in a post-Blakely world. In …


Understanding Settlement In Damages (And Beyond), Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Understanding Settlement In Damages (And Beyond), Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For all of the ways in which the Sabia case is extraordinary, its outcome--settlement--is decidedly ordinary. In most civil litigation, as in the Sabias' litigation against Dr. Maryellen Humes and Norwalk Hospital, "[s]ettlement is where the action is." Roughly two-thirds of all cases settle (and most of the rest are resolved through motions). Why do most cases settle? Given the costs, delay, and unpleasantness of the litigation process, why do any cases go to trial? To address these questions--that is, to explain why most cases settle as well as why some cases "fail" to settle and result in trial--legal academics …