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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective, Laurence R. Helfer, Ingrid B. Wuerth
Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective, Laurence R. Helfer, Ingrid B. Wuerth
Faculty Scholarship
Contemporary international lawmaking is characterized by a rapid growth of “soft law” instruments. Interdisciplinary studies have followed suit, purporting to frame the key question states face as a choice between soft and “hard” law. But this literature focuses on only one form of hard law—treaties—and cooperation through formal institutions. Customary international law (CIL) is barely mentioned. Other scholars dismiss CIL as increasingly irrelevant or even obsolete. Entirely missing from these debates is any consideration of whether and when states might prefer custom over treaties or soft law.
Against Game Theory, Gale M. Lucas, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner
Against Game Theory, Gale M. Lucas, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner
Faculty Scholarship
People make choices. Often, the outcome depends on choices other people make. What mental steps do people go through when making such choices? Game theory, the most influential model of choice in economics and the social sciences, offers an answer, one based on games of strategy such as chess and checkers: the chooser considers the choices that others will make and makes a choice that will lead to a better outcome for the chooser, given all those choices by other people. It is universally established in the social sciences that classical game theory (even when heavily modified) is bad at …
Controlling Financial Chaos: The Power And Limits Of Law, Steven L. Schwarcz
Controlling Financial Chaos: The Power And Limits Of Law, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines how law can help to control financial chaos. To that end, regulation should strive to not only maximize economic efficiency within the financial system but also protect the financial system itself. Any regulatory framework for achieving these goals, however, will be imperfect and have tradeoffs. Increasing financial complexity has created information failures that even disclosure cannot remedy, whereas law-imposed standardization would have its own flaws. Bounded human rationality limits the effectiveness of even otherwise ideal laws. Furthermore, the increasing dispersion of financial risk is undermining monitoring incentives. We also do not yet fully understand how systemic risk …
The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang
The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the institutional motivations that underlie several major developments in the Supreme People's Court of China's recent policy-making. Since 2007, the SPC has sent off a collection of policy signals that escapes sweeping ideological labeling: it has publically embraced a populist view of legal reform by encouraging the use of mediation in dispute resolution and popular participation in judicial policy-making, while continuing to advocate legal professionalization as a long-term policy objective. It has also eagerly attempted to enhance its own institutional competence by promoting judicial efficiency, simplifying key areas of civil law, and expanding its control over lower …
Introduction To, Preferences And Rational Choice: New Perspectives And Legal Implications, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter Huang
Introduction To, Preferences And Rational Choice: New Perspectives And Legal Implications, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter Huang
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Puzzle Of Ex Ante Efficiency: Does Rational Approvability Have Moral Weight?, Matthew D. Adler
The Puzzle Of Ex Ante Efficiency: Does Rational Approvability Have Moral Weight?, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
A governmental decision is "ex ante efficient" if it maximizes the satisfaction of everyone's preferences ex ante, relative to other possible decisions. Equivalently, each affected person would be rational to approve the decision, given her preferences and beliefs at the time of the choice. Does this matter, morally speaking? Do governmental officials - legislators, judges, regulators - have a moral reason to make decisions that are ex ante efficient? The economist's answer is "yes." "Ex ante efficiency" is widely seen by welfare economists to have moral significance, and often appears within law-and-economics scholarship as a criterion for evaluating legal doctrines. …
Book Review, Matthew D. Adler
Book Review, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Reviewing, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason (Ruth Chang ed., 1997)
Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies
Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we discuss and debunk the four most common critiques of the rational choice research program (which we prefer to call Positive Political Theory) by explaining and advocating its foundations: the rationality assumption, component analysis (abstraction), strategic behavior, and theory building, in turn. We argue that the rationality assumption and component analysis, properly understood, can be seen to underlie all social science, despite the protestations of critics. We then discuss the two ways that PPT most clearly contributes to political science (i.e., what distinguishes it from other research programs), namely the introduction of strategic behavior (people do not …