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Full-Text Articles in Law

Regulation And Regulatory Processes, Cary Coglianese, Robert Kagan Dec 2015

Regulation And Regulatory Processes, Cary Coglianese, Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan

Regulation of business activity is nearly as old as law itself. In the last century, though, the use of regulation by modern governments has grown markedly in both volume and significance, to the point where nearly every facet of today’s economy is subject to some form of regulation. When successful, regulation can deliver important benefits to society; however, regulation can also impose undue costs on the economy and, when designed or implemented poorly, fail to meet public needs at all. Given the importance of sound regulation to society, its study by scholars of law and social science is also of …


Ratification, Reporting, And Rights: Quality Of Participation In The Convention Against Torture, Cossette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons Aug 2015

Ratification, Reporting, And Rights: Quality Of Participation In The Convention Against Torture, Cossette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

The core international human rights treaty bodies play an important role in monitoring implementation of human rights standards through consideration of states parties’ reports. Yet very little research explores how seriously governments take their reporting obligations. This article examines the reporting record of parties to the Convention against Torture, finding that report submission is heavily conditioned by the practices of neighboring countries and by a government’s human rights commitment and institutional capacity. This article also introduces original data on the quality and responsiveness of reports, finding that more democratic—and particularly newly democratic—governments tend to render higher quality reports.


Taking Empirical Research Seriously, Susan Saab Fortney Jul 2015

Taking Empirical Research Seriously, Susan Saab Fortney

Susan S. Fortney

This essay considers how empirical research on the legal profession can bridge the divide between theory, social science, and the ethical practice of law. After providing background information on the growing field of empirical legal research, Part I of this essay focuses on developments in empirical legal research on lawyering. Part II discusses how collaboration with practitioners and other stakeholders can help researchers address challenges related to accessing data. Once data are obtained, Part III suggests how dissemination and sharing of research can link the academy and practicing lawyers. The conclusion urges a collaborative course of action for legal ethics …


“Whimsy Little Contracts” With Unexpected Consequences: An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Understanding Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeff Sovern Feb 2015

“Whimsy Little Contracts” With Unexpected Consequences: An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Understanding Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeff Sovern

Jeff Sovern

Arbitration clauses have become ubiquitous in consumer contracts. These arbitration clauses require consumers to waive the constitutional right to a civil jury, access to court, and, increasingly, the procedural remedy of class representation. Because those rights cannot be divested without consent, the validity of arbitration agreements rests on the premise of consent. Consumers who do not want to arbitrate or waive their class rights can simply decline to purchase the products or services covered by an arbitration agreement. But the premise of consent is undermined if consumers do not understand the effect on their procedural rights of clicking a box …


From Access To Success: Affirmative Action Outcomes In A Class-Based System, Matthew N. Gaertner, Melissa Hart Jan 2015

From Access To Success: Affirmative Action Outcomes In A Class-Based System, Matthew N. Gaertner, Melissa Hart

Publications

Scholarly discussion about affirmative action policy has been dominated in the past ten years by debates over "mismatch theory'"--the claim that race-conscious affirmative action harms those it is intended to help by placing students who receive preferences among academically superior peers in environments where they will be overmatched and unable to compete. Despite serious empirical and theoretical challenges to this claim in academic circles, mismatch has become widely accepted outside those circles, so much so that the theory played prominently in Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas. This Article explores whether mismatch occurs in …


Federal Court Rulemaking And Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang Jan 2015

Federal Court Rulemaking And Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to advance understanding of the role that federal court rulemaking has played in litigation reform. For that purpose, we created original data sets that include (1) information about every member of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules who served from 1960 to 2013, and (2) every proposal for amending the Federal Rules that the Advisory Committee approved for consideration by the Standing Committee during the same period and that had implications for private enforcement. We show that, beginning in 1971, when a succession of Chief Justices appointed by Republican Presidents have chosen committee members, …


Disciplining Legal Scholarship, Lynn M. Lopucki Jan 2015

Disciplining Legal Scholarship, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

U.S. law schools are hiring large proportions of J.D.-Ph.D.s in tenure-track faculty positions in an effort to increase the quantity and quality of empirical legal scholarship. That effort is failing. The new recruits bring methods and objectives unsuited to law. They produce lower-than-predicted levels of empiricism because they compete on the basis of methodological sophistication, devote time and resources to disputes over arcane issues in statistics and methodology, prefer to collaborate with other Ph.D.s, and intimidate empiricists whose work does not require high levels of methodological sophistication. In short, Ph.D.s impose the cultures of their disciplines on legal scholarship. Importing …


The Mismatch Myth In U.S. Higher Education: A Synthesis Of The Empirical Evidence At The Law School And Undergraduate Levels, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert Jan 2015

The Mismatch Myth In U.S. Higher Education: A Synthesis Of The Empirical Evidence At The Law School And Undergraduate Levels, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

Opponents of affirmative action in higher education commonly cite two principles to justify their opposition. One is that admissions to institutions of higher education should be based on "merit," which is often treated by critics of affirmative action as consisting of little more than test score results and high school or undergraduate grades. The second is the legal and moral imperative of not making consequential decisions based on race. We shall not address these principles except to note that others have shown that they do not make the case against affirmative action (Carbado & Harris 2008, Shultz & Zedeck 2011, …