Law and Society Commons^™

The Economics Of Limited Liability: An Empirical Study Of New York Law Firms, Scott Baker, Kimberly D. Krawiec

ExpressO

Since the rapid rise in organizational forms for business associations, academics and practitioners have sought to explain the choice of form rationale. Each form contains its own set of default rules that inevitably get factored into this decision, including the extent to which each individual firm owner will be held personally liable for the collective debts and obligations of the firm. The significance of the differences in these default rules continues to be debated. Many commentators have advanced theories, most notably those based on unlimited liability, profit-sharing, and illiquidity, asserting that the partnership form provides efficiency benefits that outweigh any …

Sodomy And Prostitution: Laws Protecting The “Fabric Of Society”, Nicole A. Hough

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Throughout history many people have viewed sodomy and prostitution as moral evils, because sex has often been linked to sin and, therefore, to immorality and guilt. For example, in ancient Hebrew, a sodomite was known as a qadhesh, a male temple prostitute who was associated with heathen deities and impure forms of worship. The female version of qadhesh, qedheshah, is translated directly as prostitute. This archaic view of labeling prostitution and sodomy as impure has been challenged over time, and both topics are still a source of great controversy. […]

This note is a comparative analysis of sodomy and …

Toward A National Research Agenda On Violence Against Women: Continuing The Dialogue On Research And Practice [Part Two], Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

Intimate Partner Violence And The Justice System: An Examination Of The Interface, Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Women entering the court system face a challenging experience, in part, because a courtroom can be an intimidating and difficult place for any person, and in part because women victimized by crimes in which the offender is known to them face distinctive difficulties when they seek the court’s remedies. The interface is also made more challenging for women as the literature offers disparate findings as to the efficacy of criminal justice responses and civil remedies. This article briefly explores the unique characteristics of intimate partner violence cases that influence the interface of these victims with the court system.Areviewis provided of …

Free Will's A Gamble, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The debate over whether Singapore should have a casino has turned from the contest between moral values and social repercussions, on the one hand, and economic values on the other, to whether Singaporeans can be trusted to act responsibly. Put another way, the issue now seems to be whether the approach should be paternalistic, with all its connotations of the nanny state protecting the individual from himself.

True Believers Or Moral Absolutists, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The recent American presidential elections brought to the fore the question of what place moral values have in public decision-making when traditional moral values are not espoused by all in a pluralist society. Even if traditional values - seen as absolutist - are imposed on others through a democratic electoral process, that imposition, particularly in hot button issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, remains difficult to accept.

Toward A National Research Agenda On Violence Against Women: Continuing The Dialogue On Research And Practice [Part One], Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

Free Will's A Gamble, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The debate over whether Singapore should have a casino has turned from the contest between moral values and social repercussions, on the one hand, and economic values on the other, to whether Singaporeans can be trusted to act responsibly. Put another way, the issue now seems to be whether the approach should be paternalistic, with all its connotations of the nanny state protecting the individual from himself.

True Believers Or Moral Absolutists, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The recent American presidential elections brought to the fore the question of what place moral values have in public decision-making when traditional moral values are not espoused by all in a pluralist society. Even if traditional values - seen as absolutist - are imposed on others through a democratic electoral process, that imposition, particularly in hot button issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, remains difficult to accept.

Does The Tax Law Discriminate Against The Majority Of American Children: The Downside Of Our Progressive Rate Structure And Unbalanced Incentives For Higher Education?, Lester B. Snyder

University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series

Our graduate income tax structure provides an incentive to shift income to lower-bracket family members. However, some parents have much more latitude to shift income to their children than do others. Income derived from services and private business-by far the majority of American income-is less favored than income derived from publicly traded securities. The rationale given for this discrimination is that parents in services or private business, as opposed to those in securities, do not actually part with control of their property. This article explores these tax broader (yet subtle) tax benefits and their impact on the majority of children …

Certificate: Appreciation To Rodney Hurst For Urban Education Summit.

Textual material from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

A certificate of appreciation for serving as a panelist at The Education Urban Summit: "Call for Action in Education" October 26, 2004

Income, Work And Freedom, Philip L. Harvey

ExpressO

The ability of public policies to secure the economic and social rights recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is proposed as a trumping supplement to the utility-maximization criterion of neo-classical welfare economics. Two progressive proposals for ending poverty and promoting personal development and freedom are then compared using this assessment criterion. The first proposal is that society guarantee everyone an unconditional basic income (BI) without imposing work requirements in exchange for the guarantee. The second proposal is that society use direct job creation to provide employment assurance (EA) for anyone who is unable to find decent work in …

Who Has The Body? The Paths To Habeas Corpus Reform, Cary H. Federman

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this article is to place the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 within a political and historical framework that describes the effort by the Supreme Court and various interested parties to restrict prisoners’ access to the federal courts by way of habeas corpus. Of principal concern here is how an act of terrorism against the United States provides an opportunity for Congress to restrict death row prisoners from obtaining habeas corpus review. Along with an analysis of Supreme Court decisions, three attempts to limit federal habeas corpus review for state prisoners from the late …

Community Determinants Of Volunteer Participation: The Case Of Japan, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

Why are some communities more civically engaged than others? Why do some communities provide services with volunteer labor whereas others rely primarily on government provision? When communities provide both volunteer and paid labor for the same service, how do they motivate and organize those volunteers? This article addresses these questions through quantitative tests of prevailing explanations for levels of civic engagement (e.g., education, TV viewing, urbanization) and qualitative analyses of case studies of three medium-sized cities in Japan, focusing particularly on the service areas of firefighting and elder care. The statistical analyses demonstrate that current explanations that rely on individual …

A Moderate Defense Of Hate Speech Regulations On University Campuses, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The regulation of hate speech on public and private university campuses is a fiercely contested and divisive issue. Professor Bradley Wendel defends the middle ground in this debate. This Essay argues that concerns about abuses of power by those in positions of authority are unfounded when an institution possesses greater expertise in a domain than the citizens who are affected by the institution’s decision, provided that the institution is acting on the basis of reasons that are shared by the affected individual.

When Laws Backfire: Unintended Consequences Of Public Policy, Roger Roots

Roger Roots

Why is it that so many laws perpetually fall short of their intended goals? Why haven’t humanity’s greatest minds managed to solve basic social ills? This article amasses considerable evidence suggesting that (a) law is inherently incapable of producing major social change because legal restrictions unsettle social equilibria and generate counteractions and (b) the subconscious purpose behind many laws is the promotion of social solidarity for its own sake. The author concludes that laws and the politics that forge them are essentially religious practices that have little basis in rational analysis. Thus can be explained both the perpetual failure of …

Program: University Of South Florida, St. Petersburg Presents The Civil Rights Movement In Florida Conference June 3-6, 2004

Textual material from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

A gathering of Movement veterans, scholars, students and the community.

Agenda: Preliminary Agenda For University Of South Florida's "The Civil Rights Movement In Florida" Conference June 2-6, 2004

Textual material from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

Preliminary agenda for University of South Florida's "The Civil Rights Movement in Florida" Conference. June 2-6, 2004.

Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadow of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes. Agency costs; attorney competence, compensation, and workloads; resources; sentencing and bail rules; and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments: overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems but sometimes overcompensate. The …

Information Packet For The Civil Rights Movement In Florida Conference. June 3-6, 2004. St. Petersburg, Florida

Textual material from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

Information packet from USF to Rodney Hurst confirming him as panelist for "The Civil Rights Movement in Florida" Conference. Folder 3

Modern Bootlegging And The Prohibition On Fair Prices: Last Call For The Repeal Of Pharmaceutical Price Gouging, Luke W. Cleland

ExpressO

This article discusses the recent passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Modernization and Improvement Act of 2003, and the executive and judicial decisions affecting the ability of the general public to access foreign pharmaceutical markets. The article examines the recent actions taken by the U.S. government, explore various state movements within the United States aimed at reducing pharmaceutical drug prices, outline the process of pharmaceutical drug prices in foreign countries, and advocate for a workable integration of all available mechanisms to feasibly reduce prescription drug prices for the benefit of both U.S. consumers and U.S. drug companies. As avenues to …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Securing Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policy Making, Cary Coglianese

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Innovation, Regulation And The Selection Environment, Timothy F. Malloy, Peter Sinsheimer

ExpressO

This article focuses on the question of how regulation can be best designed to encourage technological innovation. Most scholarship in this area applies standard economic analysis to evaluate the impact of various forms of regulation on technological innovation. We reject that approach as too narrow, drawing instead upon principles of evolutionary economics. The basic premise of the article is that a firm’s technology choices—and its response to regulation intended to shape those choices—are influenced by other actors (such as suppliers and competitors), by external social and legal institutions (e.g., industry standards and norms) and by the firms' internal structure (such …

What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …

Shifting Sands: The Limits Of Science In Setting Risk Standards, Cary Coglianese, Gary E. Marchant

All Faculty Scholarship

Regulators need to rely on science to understand problems and predict the consequences of regulatory actions, but over reliance on science can actually contribute to, or at least deflect attention from, incoherent policymaking. In this article, we explore the problems with using science to justify policy decisions by analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency's recently revised air quality standards for ground-level ozone and particulate matter, some of the most significant regulations ever issued. In revising these standards, EPA mistakenly invoked science as the exclusive basis for its decisions and deflected attention from a remarkable series of inconsistencies. For example, even though …

Toward A New Theory Of Notice And Deterrence, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

This article sets forth a new model of “notice” and deterrence that helps explain some long-standing contradictions in the literature on deterrence. Nearly all the work in the area of criminal law and deterrence has included an assumption that would-be offenders know the laws and the threatened sanctions, and therefore adjust their behavior in light of these disincentives. The fact that most people seem to be ignorant of the exact boundaries of the rules, and ignorant of the sanctions, presents an enormous conceptual problem for the classic model of deterrence. This new model presents an alternative mechanism for deterrence based …

The Disenchantment Of Logically Formal Legal Rationality Or Max Weber's Sociology In The Genealogy Of The Contemporary Mode Of Western Legal Thought, Duncan Kennedy

ExpressO

Max Weber began his sociology of law with a description of the then present of Western legal thought, along with a brief summary of its previous stages. This appreciation begins with a summary description of the Western legal thought of Weber's time, as it looks from our present 100 years later, emphasizing the contrast between the mainstream of his time, now called Classical Legal Thought, and its critics in the social current. Part II presents Weber's sociology of law, comparing and contrasting his approach with that of the social current. The most striking thing about Weber's sociology of law, from …

Entrapment And The Problem Of Deterring Police Misconduct, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

Many the states currently use a version of the entrapment defense known as the “objective test,” which focuses solely on the extent of police overreaching in the case, and seeks to deter police misconduct by acquitting the defendant. Acquitting defendants as a means of deterring undercover police misconduct, however, is a public policy fraught with problems, and these problems have not been adequately addressed in the literature to date. This article applies the insights of modern deterrence theory to wrongful activity by police in undercover operations. In doing so, three general problems emerge. First, the objective test relies on an …

Mixed Signals: Reconsidering The Political Economy Of Judicial Deference To Administrative Agencies, Matthew C. Stephenson

ExpressO

This paper investigates rational choice explanations for patterns of Supreme Court decision-making with respect to the appropriate level of judicial deference to administrative agency decisions. In particular, I assess empirically the thesis that the Supreme Court expands deference when the Supreme Court is ideologically closer to the executive than to the circuit courts, and contracts deference when the opposite is true. I find little to no evidence supporting this "rational choice" theory of judicial deference. Given this surprising null finding, I offer alternative explanations for the data and suggest directions for future research.