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Full-Text Articles in Law
Prevention, Wrongdoing, And The Harm Principle's Breaking Point, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Prevention, Wrongdoing, And The Harm Principle's Breaking Point, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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Review of A. P. Simester and Andreas von Hirsch, Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs: On the Principles of Criminalisation (Hart 2011).
Government Regulation Of Irrationality: Moral And Cognitive Hazards, Jonathan Klick, Gregory Mitchell
Government Regulation Of Irrationality: Moral And Cognitive Hazards, Jonathan Klick, Gregory Mitchell
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Behavioral law and economics scholars who advance paternalistic policy proposals typically employ static models of decision-making behavior, despite the dynamic effects of paternalistic policies. This Article considers how paternalistic policies fare under a dynamic account of decision making that incorporates learning and motivation effects. This approach brings out two important limitations on the efficiency effects of paternalistic regulations. First, if preferences and biases are endogenous to institutional forces, paternalistic government regulations may perpetuate and even magnify a given bias and cause other adverse psychological effects. Second, for some biases, it will be more efficient to invest resources in debiasing than …
Nullificatory Juries, Kaimipono David Wenger, David A. Hoffman
Nullificatory Juries, Kaimipono David Wenger, David A. Hoffman
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In this Article, we argue that current debates on the legitimacy of punitive damages would benefit from a comparison with jury nullification in criminal trials. We discuss critiques of punitive damages and of jury nullification, noting the surprising similarities in the arguments scholars use to attack these (superficially) distinct outcomes of the jury guarantee. Not only are the criticisms alike, the institutions of punitive damages and jury nullification also turn out to have many similarities: both are, we suggest, examples of what we call "nullificatory juries." We discuss the features of such juries, and consider recent behavioral data relating to …
Can Law And Economics Be Both Practical And Principled?, David A. Hoffman, Michael P. O'Shea
Can Law And Economics Be Both Practical And Principled?, David A. Hoffman, Michael P. O'Shea
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This article describes important recent developments in normative law and economics, and the difficulties they create for the project of efficiency-based legal reform. After long proceeding without a well articulated moral justification for using economic decision procedures to choose legal rules, scholars have lately begun to devote serious attention to developing a philosophically attractive definition of well-being. At the same time, the empirical side of law and economics is also being enriched with an improved understanding of the complexities of individuals' decision-making behavior. That is where the problems begin. Scholars may have better, more plausible conceptions of well-being in hand, …