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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Availability Heuristic, Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Climate Change, Cass R. Sunstein
The Availability Heuristic, Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Climate Change, Cass R. Sunstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Because risks are on all sides of social situations, it is not possible to be "precautionary" in general. The availability heuristic ensures that some risks stand out as particularly salient, whatever their actual magnitude. Taken together with intuitive cost-benefit balancing, the availability heuristic helps to explain differences across groups, cultures, and even nations in the assessment of precautions to reduce the risks associated with climate change. There are complex links among availability, social processes for the spreading of information, and predispositions. If the United States is to take a stronger stand against climate change, it is likely to be a …
Total Liability For Excessive Harm, Robert D. Cooter, Ariel Porat
Total Liability For Excessive Harm, Robert D. Cooter, Ariel Porat
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The harm that each individual causes others is unverifiable in some circumstances where the total harm caused by everyone is verifiable. For example, the environmental agency can often measure the total harm caused by pollution much easier than it can measure the harm caused by each individual polluter. In these circumstances, implementing the usual liability rules or externality taxes is impossible. We propose a novel solution: Hold each participant in the activity responsible for all of the excessive harm that everyone causes. By "excessive harm" we mean the difference between the total harm caused by all injurers and the optimal …
Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhood In Chicago, Andrew V. Papachristos, Tracey L. Meares, Jeffrey Fagan
Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhood In Chicago, Andrew V. Papachristos, Tracey L. Meares, Jeffrey Fagan
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This research uses a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN) initiatives on neighborhood level crime rates in Chicago. Four interventions are analyzed: (1) increased federal prosecutions for convicted felons carrying or using guns, (2) the length of sentences associated with federal prosecutions, (3) supply-side firearm policing activities, and (4) social marketing of deterrence and social norms messages through justice-style offender notification meetings. Using an individual growth curve models and propensity scores to adjust for non-random group assignment, our findings suggest that several PSN interventions are associated with greater declines of homicide in the treatment neighborhoods …
Beyond Marbury: The Executive's Poer To Say What The Law Is, Cass R. Sunstein
Beyond Marbury: The Executive's Poer To Say What The Law Is, Cass R. Sunstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Under Marbury v. Madison, it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." But as a matter of actual practice, statements about "what the law is" are often made by the executive department, not the judiciary. In the last quarter-century, the Supreme Court has legitimated the executive's power of interpretation, above all in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the most-cited case in modern public law. Chevron reflects a salutary appreciation of the fact that the executive is in the best position to make the judgments of policy and principle on which …
Fast, Frugal, And (Sometimes) Wrong, Cass R. Sunstein
Fast, Frugal, And (Sometimes) Wrong, Cass R. Sunstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Do moral heuristics operate in the moral domain? If so, do they lead to moral errors? This brief essay offers an affirmative answer to both questions. In so doing, it responds to an essay by Gerd Gigerenzer on the nature of heuristics, moral and otherwise. While focused on morality, the discussion bears on the general debate between those who emphasize cognitive errors, sometimes produced by heuristics, and those who emphasize the frequent success of heuristics in producing sensible judgments in the real world. General claims are that it is contentious to see moral problems as ones of arithmetic, and that …
Information Asymmetries And The Rights To Exclude, Lior Strahilevitz
Information Asymmetries And The Rights To Exclude, Lior Strahilevitz
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Justice Breyer's Democratic Pragmatism, Cass R. Sunstein
Justice Breyer's Democratic Pragmatism, Cass R. Sunstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
There have been many efforts to reconcile judicial review with democratic self-government. Some such efforts attempt to justify judicial review if and to the extent that it promotes self-rule. Active Liberty, by Justice Stephen Breyer, is in this tradition; but it is also marked by a heavy pragmatic orientation, emphasizing as it does the need for close attention to purposes and to the importance of consequences to legal interpretation. Its distinctiveness lies in its effort to forge close connections among three seemingly disparate ideas: a democratic account of judicial review; a purposive understanding of legal texts; and a neo-pragmatic emphasis …
Endorsement Retires: From Religious Symbols To Anti-Sorting Principles, Adam M. Samaha
Endorsement Retires: From Religious Symbols To Anti-Sorting Principles, Adam M. Samaha
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
Frugal And (Sometimes) Wrong, Cass R. Sunstein
Frugal And (Sometimes) Wrong, Cass R. Sunstein
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
Do moral heuristics operate in the moral domain? If so, do they lead to moral errors? This brief essay offers an affirmative answer to both questions. In so doing, it responds to an essay by Gerd Gigerenzer on the nature of heuristics, moral and otherwise. While focused on morality, the discussion bears on the general debate between those who emphasize cognitive errors, sometimes produced by heuristics, and those who emphasize the frequent success of heuristics in producing sensible judgments in the real world. General claims are that it is contentious to see moral problems as ones of arithmetic, and that …
Information Asymmetries And The Rights To Exclude, Lior Strahilevitz
Information Asymmetries And The Rights To Exclude, Lior Strahilevitz
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
Justice Breyer's Democratic Pragmatism, Cass R. Sunstein
Justice Breyer's Democratic Pragmatism, Cass R. Sunstein
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
There have been many efforts to reconcile judicial review with democratic self-government. Some such efforts attempt to justify judicial review if and to the extent that it promotes self-rule. Active Liberty, by Justice Stephen Breyer, is in this tradition; but it is also marked by a heavy pragmatic orientation, emphasizing as it does the need for close attention to purposes and to the importance of consequences to legal interpretation. Its distinctiveness lies in its effort to forge close connections among three seemingly disparate ideas: a democratic account of judicial review; a purposive understanding of legal texts; and a neo-pragmatic emphasis …
Undue Process: Congressional Referral And Judicial Resistance In The Schiavo Controversy, Adam M. Samaha
Undue Process: Congressional Referral And Judicial Resistance In The Schiavo Controversy, Adam M. Samaha
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
Disparity: The Normative And Empirical Failure Of The Federal Guidelines, Albert Alschuler
Disparity: The Normative And Empirical Failure Of The Federal Guidelines, Albert Alschuler
Articles
No abstract provided.
Correspondence: Testing Minimalism: A Reply, Cass R. Sunstein
Correspondence: Testing Minimalism: A Reply, Cass R. Sunstein
Articles
No abstract provided.
Political Constraints On Supreme Court Reform, Adrian Vermeule
Political Constraints On Supreme Court Reform, Adrian Vermeule
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Testimony On A Proposed Journalist-Source Privilege To The Senate Committee On The Judiciary, Geoffrey R. Stone
Testimony On A Proposed Journalist-Source Privilege To The Senate Committee On The Judiciary, Geoffrey R. Stone
Occasional Papers
No abstract provided.
Political Constraints On Supreme Court Reform, Adrian Vermeule
Political Constraints On Supreme Court Reform, Adrian Vermeule
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
When 2 Or 3 Come Together, Kelsi Brown Corkran, Tracey L. Meares
When 2 Or 3 Come Together, Kelsi Brown Corkran, Tracey L. Meares
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
This article investigates policies that are responsive to crime in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods from a community-based context. The vehicle is an analysis of a community-wide prayer vigil held in Chicago in May of 1997. The vigil resulted from a collaboration between the Chicago Police Department and hundreds of (mostly) African- American churches on Chicago’s West Side. Strikingly, the local police district’s commander facilitated the vigil. We explain the sociological and political significance of this collaboration by drawing upon the “Chicago School” of urban sociology and demonstrating theoretically and empirically the potential for the collaboration, through the integration of key community …
The Business Of Democracy Is Democracy, John P. Mccormick, Arthur J. Jacobson
The Business Of Democracy Is Democracy, John P. Mccormick, Arthur J. Jacobson
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Absolute Priority, Valuation Uncertainty, And The Reorganization Bargain, Donald S. Bernstein, Douglas G. Baird
Absolute Priority, Valuation Uncertainty, And The Reorganization Bargain, Donald S. Bernstein, Douglas G. Baird
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors are entitled to insist upon being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from such "absolute priority" are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation of reorganization scholars for decades. By the standard law-and-economics account, deviations from absolute priority arise because well-positioned insiders take advantage of cumbersome procedures and inept judges. In this paper, we suggest that a far simpler and more benign force dominates bargaining in reorganization cases. “Deviations” from absolute priority are inevitable even in a world completely committed to respecting priority …
Reparations As Rough Justice, Adrian Vermeule
Reparations As Rough Justice, Adrian Vermeule
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Reparations As Rough Justice, Adrian Vermeule
Reparations As Rough Justice, Adrian Vermeule
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
The Business Of Democracy Is Democracy, John P. Mccormick, Arthur J. Jacobson
The Business Of Democracy Is Democracy, John P. Mccormick, Arthur J. Jacobson
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
No abstract provided.
Absolute Voting Rules, Adrian Vermeule
Absolute Voting Rules, Adrian Vermeule
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Emergencies And Democratic Failure, Eric A. Posner, Adrian Vermeule
Emergencies And Democratic Failure, Eric A. Posner, Adrian Vermeule
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Critics of emergency measures such as the U.S. government's response to 9/11 invoke the Carolene Products framework, which directs courts to apply strict scrutiny to laws and executive actions that target political or ethnic minorities. The critics suggest that such laws and actions are usually the product of democratic failure, and are especially likely to be so during emergencies. However, the application of the Carolene Products framework to emergencies is questionable. Democratic failure is no more likely during emergencies than during normal times, and courts are in a worse position to correct democratic failures during emergencies than during normal times. …
International Law: A Welfarist Approach, Eric A. Posner
International Law: A Welfarist Approach, Eric A. Posner
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper evaluates international law from a welfarist perspective. Global welfarism requires that international law advance the well being of everyone in the world, and scholars influenced by global welfarism and similar cosmopolitan principles have advocated radical restructuring of international law. But global welfarism is subject to several constraints, including (1) heterogeneity of preferences of the world population, which produces the state system; (2) agency costs, which produce imperfect governments; and (3) the problem of collective action. These constraints place limits on what policies motivated by global welfarism can achieve, and explain some broad features of international law that otherwise …
Paretian Intergenerational Discounting, David A. Weisbach, Dexter Samida
Paretian Intergenerational Discounting, David A. Weisbach, Dexter Samida
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper argues that discounting costs and benefits of projects for the opportunity costs of capital Pareto dominates decision criteria that do not discount. It considers and rejects several objections to the Pareto dominance argument, including the problem of making compensating transfers for the costs and benefits of projects and whether taking opportunity costs into account is different than discounting. It also argues that discounting future costs and benefits of projects does not under-value future generations.
The Integration Of Tax And Spending Programs, David A. Weisbach
The Integration Of Tax And Spending Programs, David A. Weisbach
Occasional Papers
No abstract provided.
The Phantom Philosophy? An Empirical Investigation Of Legal Interpretation, William K. Ford, Jason J. Czarnezki
The Phantom Philosophy? An Empirical Investigation Of Legal Interpretation, William K. Ford, Jason J. Czarnezki
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
This Article tests a model of judicial decisionmaking that incorporates elements of both the attitudinal model and the legal model, along with measures of collegiality and other variables. We develop a measure of interpretive philosophy relying primarily on judicial opinions, which we code for certain indicators of traditional interpretive approaches (i.e., the use of interpretive tools). The critical question is whether judges with similar interpretive philosophies are more likely to agree with one another when deciding cases. Our general finding is that ideology and interpretive philosophy are not significant predictors of agreement. Instead, experience on the bench together is a …
Executive Exposure: Government Secrecy, Constitutional Law, And Platforms For Judicial Elaboration, Adam M. Samaha
Executive Exposure: Government Secrecy, Constitutional Law, And Platforms For Judicial Elaboration, Adam M. Samaha
Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers
American law never reached a satisfying conclusion about public access to information on government operations. But recent events are prompting reconsideration. As our current system is reassessed, three shortfalls in past debates should be overcome. The first involves ignorance of foreign systems. Other democracies grapple with information access problems, and their recent experiments are illuminating. Indeed they expose two additional domestic weaknesses. One is a line we have drawn within constitutional law. Courts and commentators tend to treat constitutional issues of public access separately from those of executive discretion to withhold information. These matters should be seen as parts of …