Law and Economics Commons^™

Law, Lawyers And Sustainable Development: Reflections Of A Fellow Traveler, Muna B. Ndulo

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

At the national level, the rule of law is necessary to create an environment for providing sustainable livelihoods and eradicating poverty. Poverty often stems from disempowerment, exclusion and discrimination. The rule of law fosters development through strengthening the voices of individuals and communities, by providing access to justice, ensuring due process and establishing remedies for the violation of rights. Security of livelihoods, shelter, tenure and contracts can enable and empower the poor to defend themselves against violations of their rights. Legal empowerment goes beyond the provision of legal remedies and supports better economic opportunities. In order for the rule of …

The Multiple Selves Of Economic Self-Determination, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay, I argue that the contemporary world requires an explicitly plural and flexible conception of economic self-determination and especially a broader vision of the economic “self” at its center. I contend that older dyadic understandings of economic self-determination, formed largely in light of twentieth-century anticolonial struggles, are no longer sufficient. Individuals can be economically constrained across multiple vectors by newly powerful actors and innovative forms of control. They are thus potentially implicated in multiple political and economic selves—not just personal but also local, national, and transnational.

As such, those seeking to promote economic self-determination should more explicitly recognize …

Ownership And Obligations: The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Private property ordinarily triggers notions of individual rights, not social obligations. The core image of property rights, in the minds of most people, is that the owner has a right to exclude others and owes no further obligation to them. That image is highly misleading. Property owners owe far more responsibilities to others, both owners and non-owners, than the conventional imagery of property rights suggests. Property rights are inherently relational, and because of this characteristic, owners necessarily owe obligations to others. But the responsibility, or obligation, dimension of private ownership has been sorely under-theorised. Inherent in the concept of ownership …

The Origins, Nature, And Promise Of Empirical Legal Studies And A Response To Concerns, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article describes the origins of three movements in legal academia: empirical legal studies (ELS), law and society, and law and economics. It then quantifies the distribution across scholarly fields (for example, economics and psychology) of authors in these movements’ journals and reports the impact of the movements’ scholarly journals. By focusing on two leading law and economics journals, this Article also explores the effect of a journal being centered in law schools rather than in a social science discipline. It suggests that ELS has achieved rapid growth and impact within the academic legal community because of (1) its association …

Burger, Without Spies, Please: Notes From A Human Rights Researcher, Anna Valerie Dolidze

Cornell Law School J.S.D. Student Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Max Weber On Property: An Effort In Interpretive Understanding, Laura R. Ford

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

This article reviews Max Weber’s scholarly work pertaining to property, beginning with his first dissertation and ending with the compilation that is Economy and Society. Three phases of Weber’s work are described in detail: a legal phase, an economic-historical phase, and a sociological phase. It is argued that the sociological phase represents the culmination of the two prior phases, drawing on material and arguments from those earlier phases. In the sociological phase of his writing, it is argued that Weber developed a theory of property that is capable of accounting for that phenomenon in all of its dimensions: structural, material, …

Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.”

This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …

Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is common for economically oriented transnational legal theorists to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. It is less common for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. Moreover, we effectively define ourselves and our fellow humans by reference to that which we equalize. For it is in virtue of the latter that our global welfare formulations treat us as "counting" for purposes of globally aggregating and maximizing.

To analyze maximization language on the one hand, and equalization and identification language …

Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

With the American economy stalled and another federal election campaign season well underway, the “outsourcing” of American jobs is again on the public agenda. Latest figures indicate not only that claims for joblessness benefits are up, but also that the rate of American job-exportation has more than doubled since the last electoral cycle. This year’s political candidates have been quick to take note. In consequence, more than at any time since the early 1990s, continued American participation in the World Trade Organization, in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and in the processes of global economic integration more generally appear …

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing.

To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

Economic Emergency And The Rule Of Law, Bernadette Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Academic work extolling the merits of the "rule of law" both domestically and internationally abounds today, yet the meanings of the phrase itself seem to proliferate. Two of the most prominent contexts in which rule of law rhetoric appears are those of economic development and states of emergency. In the area of private law, dissemination of the rule of law across the globe and, in particular, among emerging market countries is often deemed a prerequisite for enhancing economic development, partly because it ensures that foreign investments will not be summarily expropriated and that contractual rights will not be frustrated by …

Why (Only) Esops?, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE).

A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

From "Mission-Creep" To Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance, The Ifis, And The Intended Beneficiaries Of Globalization, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Uncertain Psychological Case For Paternalism, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Predicting The Future Of Employment Law: Reflecting Or Refracting Market Forces?, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Article I predict how employment law will change in the future. My task is positive rather than normative. I will not argue that the developments I foresee are good ones to be applauded. Rather, they arise "inevitably" from the way the law will react to changes in labor markets.

Of course, as Professor Ronald Dworkin emphasizes, in developing a theory of law one cannot sharply distinguish between the positive and normative. Dworkin points out that even in describing the current legal framework, one must choose what to highlight and what to ignore, a process based on values. When …

The Limits Of Behavioral Decision Theory In Legal Analysis: The Case Of Liquidated Damages, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Discontent with the apparent tunnel vision of economic analysis of law's rational choice theory, legal scholars recently have turned with enthusiasm to "behavioral decision theory" (BDT) to enrich their understanding of how people make decisions and of the law's effect on human behavior. This article, for the first time, evaluates BDT's potential contribution to legal analysis by focusing on a single, important legal paradox: Despite contract law's freedom of contract paradigm, courts actively and enthusiastically police agreed damages provisions. Although the article finds an important place in legal analysis for this new discipline, the article raises and discusses several obstacles …

Some Thoughts On Poverty And Failure In The Market For Children's Human Capital, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Some Considerations Which May Lead Lawmakers To Modify A Policy When Adopting It As Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.