Criminal Law Commons^™

The Welfare Effects Of Civil Forfeiture, Michael Preciado, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

Using a laboratory experiment we explore competing claims on the welfare effects of civil forfeiture. Experiment participants are tasked with making trade-offs in allocating resources “to fight crime” with and without the ability to seize and forfeit assets. It is an open question whether the societal impact of reducing crime is greater in a world with or without civil forfeiture. Proponents of civil forfeiture argue that the ill-gotten gains of criminals can be used by law enforcement to further fight crime. Opponents claim that the confiscation of assets by law enforcement distorts the prioritization of cases by focusing attention, not …

Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique Of American Criminal Justice And Introduction To Marxist Jurisprudence, Steven E. Gilmore

Steven E Gilmore

How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire

John D Gleissner Esquire

No abstract provided.

Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson

Dru Stevenson

Between the Civil War and World War II, every state and the federal government shifted toward codified versions of their statutes. Academia has so far ignored the systemic effects of this dramatic change. For example, the consensus view in the academic literature about rules and standards has been that precise rules present higher enactment costs for legislatures than would general standards, while vague standards present higher information costs for courts and citizens than do rules. Systematic codification – featuring hierarchical format and numbering, topical arrangement, and cross-references – inverts this relationship, lowering transaction costs for legislatures and increasing information costs …

The Rise Of Planning In Industrial America, 1865-1914

Richard Adelstein

How American firms grew very large after the Civil War, and how Americans responded to them.

Relational Contract Theory And Management Contracts: A Paradigm For The Application Of The Theory Of The Norms, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

This paper examines management contracts as a paradigm for the application of relational contracts theory and especially of the theory of contractual and relational norms. This theory, deriving from Macauley's implications, but structured and analysed by I.R. MacNeil gives us a framework for the explanation and understanding of contractual obligations and business relations' rules and practice. After presenting the key literature about the norms theory and especially defining the content of MacNeil's norms, we define management contracts as relations, characterised by a high relational element and we explain why, investigating all their features, which make them a suitable object for …

Firms As Social Actors, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A close look at what firms are and how they act.

Organizations And Economics, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A contribution to a symposium on a paper by Richard Posner.

Economics Of Plea Bargaining, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A short summary of earlier work for a sociological audience.

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Corporations And Social Costs: The Wal-Mart Case Study, Benedict Sheehy

ExpressO

This article examines the role of the corporate vehicle in the creation of social costs. The article identifies some of the political commitments and philosophies behind the differing notions of corporations. Social costs are those activities which result from business activity and cause uncompensated harm to society. The founding contribution to the law and economics discussion by Ronald Coase is given a thorough treatment. The paper next, turns to the dominant explanation of corporate structure, namely the law and economics model developed expounded by Easterbrook and Fischel. It then applies the theoretical discussion in a case study of the world’s …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Finding New Constitutional Rights Through The Supreme Court’S Evolving “Government Purpose” Test Under Minimum Scrutiny, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

By now we all are familiar with the litany of cases which refused to find elevated scrutiny for so-called “affirmative” or “social” rights such as education, welfare or housing: Lindsey v. Normet, San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, Dandridge v. Williams, DeShaney v. Winnebago County. There didn’t seem to be anything in minimum scrutiny which could protect such facts as education or housing, from government action. However, unobtrusively and over the years, the Supreme Court has clarified and articulated one aspect of minimum scrutiny which holds promise for vindicating facts. You will recall that under minimum scrutiny government’s action is …

Are We Unnecessarily Serving Up Civil Liberties On A Patriot Platter?, Kyle A. Clark

ExpressO

This paper seeks to identify the general cognitive biases and overall measurement errors inherent in recent studies seeking to measure the effects of terrorism. Such biases lead to unprincipled conclusions founded upon incomplete information. These problems are exacerbated by inaccurate measures of the true impact of terrorism on the economy, the human psyche, policy-making and the world community. Such measurement errors severely diminish the probative value of the studies and lead to merely speculative conclusions. The goal of this paper is to shed light on these inaccurate conclusions in the hope that future legislation and practices aimed at curbing terrorism …

An Economic Model Of Fair Use (With Thomas Miceli), Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A formal model of the law of fair use.

Detection Avoidance, Chris William Sanchirico

ExpressO

In practice, the problem of law enforcement is half a matter of what the government does to catch violators and half a matter of what violators do to avoid getting caught. In the theory of law enforcement, however, although the state’s efforts at "detection" play a decisive role, offenders’ efforts at "detection avoidance" are largely ignored. Always problematic, this imbalance has become critical in recent years as episodes of corporate misconduct spur new interest in punishing process crimes like obstruction of justice and perjury. This article adds detection avoidance to the existing theoretical frame with an eye toward informing the …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Deterring Roper’S Juveniles: Why Immature Criminal Youth Require The Death Penalty More Than Adults – A Law & Economics Approach, Moin A. Yahya

ExpressO

In Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty for juveniles unconstitutional. It relied on three reasons, one of which concerns this article, namely the theory that juveniles are less culpable and deterrable than adults. The Court relied on the American Medical Association’s amicus brief which purported to show scientifically that juveniles had less developed brains than adults. The Court characterized juveniles as being risk-lovers who highly preferred the present over the future, who loved gains no matter how risky but did not care for losses, and who could not engage in proper cost-benefit analysis, because …

Knowledge And Power In The Mechanical Firm: Planning For Profit In Austrian Perspective, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A theory of central planning employing Austrian themes and applied to private firms and Taylorism.

Sex, Shame, And The Law: An Economic Perspective On Megan's Law, Doron Teichman

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This Article focuses on the question, how should policymakers aiming to minimize the cost of sanctioning utilize legal and nonlegal sanctions when designing a system of criminal sanctions. After presenting the general economic case for the use of nonlegal sanctions the article turns to present a model of shaming, which unlike existing models, incorporates the endogenous effects of legal and nonlegal sanctions. This model demonstrates that tailoring an efficient regime that combines legal and nonlegal sanctions might be more difficult than previously perceived by law and economics scholars. A specific case study presented in this article is of the current …

Equity And Efficiency In Markets For Ideas, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Intellectual property and patent protection in light of the AIDS crisis in Africa.

Toward A Comparative Economics Of Plea Bargaining (With Thomas Miceli), Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A comparison of adversarial and inquisitorial approaches to criminal adjudication and its implications for plea bargaining.

Victims As Cost Bearers, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A brief recasting of the price exaction model.

Four Entries, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Four entries: "American Institutional Economics and the Legal System" (I: 61-66); "John Rogers Commons" (I: 324-327); Richard Theodore Ely" (II: 28-29); and "Plea Bargaining: A Comparative Approach"

Deciding For Bigness, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Antitrust as a constitutional constraint on the growth of firms.

The Competition Of Technologies In Markets For Ideas: Copyright And Fair Use In Evolutionary Perspective (With Steven Peretz), Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A theory of intellectual goods as distinct from public or private goods, and the rationale for copyright that flows from it.

The Plea Bargain In England And America: A Comparative Institutional Approach, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A comparative view of adjudication by guilty plea in the US and the UK.

Institutional Function And Evolution In The Criminal Process, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

An extended development of the foundations of the price exaction model of the criminal process.

The Moral Costs Of Crime: Prices, Information And Organization, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

More on price exaction, and punishments as conveyors of cost information in the criminal process.

Informational Paradox And The Pricing Of Crime: Capital Sentencing Standards In Economic Perspective, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A further development of the price exaction model and an application to the problem of sentencing standards.