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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Untying The Gordian Knot: A Proposal For Determining Applicability Of The Laws Of War To The War On Terror, Geoffery S. Corn, Eric Talbot Jensen Dec 2008

Untying The Gordian Knot: A Proposal For Determining Applicability Of The Laws Of War To The War On Terror, Geoffery S. Corn, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer Jun 2008

Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal …


The Ownership Delusion: When Law Libraries "Buy" Electronic Documents, Are They Getting More, Or Simply Paying More?, Simon Canick Feb 2008

The Ownership Delusion: When Law Libraries "Buy" Electronic Documents, Are They Getting More, Or Simply Paying More?, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the issues surrounding electronic document ownership in academic libraries. It discusses the guidelines of AALL with regard to licensing electronic materials, and how it measures up to what vendors are willing to offer. The author takes a critical stance on who benefits from the electronic document ownership agreements.


About Facebook - Change At The Social-Networking Juggernaut Creates New Opportunities For Law Library Outreach, Jennifer L. Behrens Jan 2008

About Facebook - Change At The Social-Networking Juggernaut Creates New Opportunities For Law Library Outreach, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreword: Making Sense Of Information For Environmental Protection, James Salzman, Douglas A. Kysar Jan 2008

Foreword: Making Sense Of Information For Environmental Protection, James Salzman, Douglas A. Kysar

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the ubiquity of information, no one has proposed calling the present era the Knowledge Age. Knowledge depends not only on access to reliable information, but also on sound judgment regarding which information to access and how to situate that information in relation to the values and purposes that comprise the individual's or the social group's larger projects. This is certainly the case for wise and effective environmental governance. A regulator needs accurate information to understand the nature of a problem and the consequences of potential responses. Likewise, the regulated community needs information to decide how best to comply with …


Avalanche Or Undue Alarm? An Empirical Study Of Subpoenas Received By The News Media, Ronnell Andersen Jones Jan 2008

Avalanche Or Undue Alarm? An Empirical Study Of Subpoenas Received By The News Media, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

For more than thirty years, proponents and opponents of a federal reporter’s shield law have debated the necessity of a privilege for members of the news media and have disagreed sharply about the frequency with which subpoenas are issued to the press. Most recently, in the wake of several high-profile contempt cases, proponents have pointed to a perceived “avalanche” of subpoenas, while opponents have contended that the receipt of subpoenas by reporters remains very rare. This article summarizes the results of an empirical study on the question. The study gathered data on subpoenas received by daily newspapers and network-affiliated television …


Silence Of The Laws? Conceptions Of International Relations And International Law In Hobbes, Kant, And Locke, Michael W. Doyle, Geoffrey S. Carlson Jan 2008

Silence Of The Laws? Conceptions Of International Relations And International Law In Hobbes, Kant, And Locke, Michael W. Doyle, Geoffrey S. Carlson

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explains how the political theorists Hobbes, Kant, and Locke interpret the decision to go to war (us ad bellum) and the manner in which the war is conducted (just in bello). It also considers the implications of the three theories for compliance with international law more generally. It concludes that although all three can lay claim to certain key features of modern international law, it is Locke who provides the most complete support for both the laws of war, in particular, and with international law, in general.


Are We Over-Lawyering International Affairs, Philip C. Bobbitt, John D. Hutson, John C. Yoo, Philip D. Zelikow, Edwin D. Williamson Jan 2008

Are We Over-Lawyering International Affairs, Philip C. Bobbitt, John D. Hutson, John C. Yoo, Philip D. Zelikow, Edwin D. Williamson

Faculty Scholarship

This panel will discuss the role of lawyers — particularly government lawyers — in addressing questions of legal policy. We will discuss fundamental questions such as: Should lawyers decide legal policy? Or, is that best left to the policymakers? Should lawyers give advice as to legal policy, or should they stick to providing answers as to what the law is? How should lawyers respond to what a policymaker thinks is the legal question, but is really a question of legal policy? If lawyers find the law vague or lacking, should they fill in the gaps, advising as to what the …


The American Law Institute Goes Global: The Restatement Of International Commercial Arbitration, George A. Bermann Jan 2008

The American Law Institute Goes Global: The Restatement Of International Commercial Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The American Law Institute's new Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration is only barely underway, and the reporters began with a chapter, namely the recognition and enforcement of awards, that should represent for them a comfort zone of sorts within the overall project. Yet, already a number of difficult, and to some extent unexpectedly difficult, questions have arisen. Some of the difficulties stem from the very nature of an ALI Restatement project. Others stem from the nature of arbitration itself and, more particularly, from the inherent tension between arbitral and judicial functions in the arbitration arena. Still …


Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur Jan 2008

Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on the probability of pretrial settlement in civil litigation. The existing economic and behavioral models of settlement are incomplete because they do not incorporate the effect of adaptation on the sum for which a plaintiff is willing to accept an offer. When an individual first suffers a serious injury, she will likely predict that the injury will greatly diminish her future happiness. However, during the time that …


For Whom The Tel Tolls: Can State Tax And Expenditure Limits Effectively Reduce Spending?, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen Moule Jan 2008

For Whom The Tel Tolls: Can State Tax And Expenditure Limits Effectively Reduce Spending?, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen Moule

Faculty Scholarship

Can voters stop state governments from spending at high rates through the enactment of tax and expenditure limits (TELs), or do these laws become dead letters? We draw upon the principal-agent literature to theorize that TELs – one of the most frequent uses of the initiative process across the country – may be circumvented by the sorts of elected officials who would inspire their passage.

In order to investigate our claim, we conduct an event study. First, we test for the effectiveness of TELs across states using a differences-in-differences model. Second, we dissect our treatment variable using different legal provisions …


Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan Jan 2008

Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan

Faculty Scholarship

We introduce a new "different lives" survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.


How Does Culture Count In Legal Change?: A Review With A Proposal From A Social Movement Perspective, Setsuo Miyazawa Jan 2008

How Does Culture Count In Legal Change?: A Review With A Proposal From A Social Movement Perspective, Setsuo Miyazawa

Faculty Scholarship

We have in this volume four articles on legal change in China and Japan written by four distinguished authors. These articles vary with regard to subject state, specificity of issues, and breadth of analytical scope. They commonly discuss one factor, however: culture. The purpose of this Comment is to examine the way each article uses culture in its explanations of legal change. The Comment concludes with a brief suggestion, from a social movement perspective, on employing culture as an explanatory tool in a non-essentialist way.


Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez Jan 2008

Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2008

Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars debate whether a competition between experts in legal, political, or economic contexts elicits truthful information and, in turn, enables people to make informed decisions. Thus, we analyze experimentally the conditions under which competition between experts induces the experts to make truthful statements and enables jurors listening to these statements to improve their decisions. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to game theoretic predictions and contrary to critics of our adversarial legal system, competition induces enough truth telling to allow jurors to improve their decisions. Then, when we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or the threat of …


When Voters Make Laws: How Direct Democracy Is Shaping American Cities, Elizabeth Garrett, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2008

When Voters Make Laws: How Direct Democracy Is Shaping American Cities, Elizabeth Garrett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Agenda Power In The Italian Chamber Of Deputies, 1988-2000, Gary W. Cox, William B. Heller, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2008

Agenda Power In The Italian Chamber Of Deputies, 1988-2000, Gary W. Cox, William B. Heller, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We find strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly zero, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties’ roll rates, which average about 20% on all final passage votes. Second, we find that, controlling for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills that on …


Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2008

Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Lessons From India In Organizational Innovation: A Tale Of Two Heart Hospitals, Barak D. Richman, Krishna Udayakumar, Will Mitchell, Kevin A. Schulman Jan 2008

Lessons From India In Organizational Innovation: A Tale Of Two Heart Hospitals, Barak D. Richman, Krishna Udayakumar, Will Mitchell, Kevin A. Schulman

Faculty Scholarship

Recent discussions in health reform circles have pinned great hopes on the prospect of innovation as the solution to the high-cost, inadequate-quality U.S. health system. But U.S. health care institutions--insurers, providers and specialists--have ceded leadership in innovation to Indian hospitals such as Care Hospital in Hyderabad and the Fortis Hospitals around New Delhi, which have U.S.-trained doctors and can perform open heart surgery for $6000 (compared to $100,000 in the United States). The Indian success is a window into America's stalemate with inflating costs and stagnant innovation.


White Cartels, The Civil Rights Act Of 1866, And The History Of Jones V. Alfred H. Mayer Co., Darrell A. H. Miller Jan 2008

White Cartels, The Civil Rights Act Of 1866, And The History Of Jones V. Alfred H. Mayer Co., Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

In 2008, Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. turned forty. In Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court held for the first time that Congress can use its enforcement power under the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, to prohibit private racial discrimination in the sale of property. Jones temporarily awoke the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement legislation--the Civil Rights Act of 1866--from a century-long slumber. Moreover, it recognized an economic reality: racial discrimination by private actors can be as debilitating as racial discrimination by public actors. In doing so, Jones veered away from three decades of civil rights doctrine--a doctrine that had …


The State Of Public Access To Federal Government Databases Detailed In Recommended New Book, Jennifer L. Behrens Jan 2008

The State Of Public Access To Federal Government Databases Detailed In Recommended New Book, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar Jan 2008

Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar

Faculty Scholarship

There is evidence that countries trade votes among each other in international institutions on a wide range of issues, including the use of force, trade issues and elections of judges. Vote-trading has been criticized as being a form of corruption, undue influence and coercion. Contrary to common wisdom, however, I argue in this paper that the case for introducing policy measures against vote-trading cannot be made out on the basis of available evidence. This paper sets out an analytical framework for analyzing vote-trading in international institutions, focusing on three major contexts in which vote-trading may generate benefits and costs: (1) …


The President’S Question Time: Power, Information, And The Executive Credibility Gap, Sudha Setty Jan 2008

The President’S Question Time: Power, Information, And The Executive Credibility Gap, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

The rule of law depends on a working separation of powers and transparency and accountability in government. If information is power, the ability of one branch of government to control information represents the ability to control federal legislation, policy, and decision-making. The Framers of the United States Constitution developed the Madisonian model of separated powers and functions, and a system of checks and balances to maintain those separations, with this in mind. History has shown a progressive shift of the power to control information toward the executive branch and away from the Legislature. Particularly when unified, one-party government precludes effective …


Tribal Nation Economics: Rebuilding Commercial Prosperity In Spite Of U.S. Trade Restraints–Recommendations For Economic Revitalization In Indian Country, Angelique Eaglewoman Jan 2008

Tribal Nation Economics: Rebuilding Commercial Prosperity In Spite Of U.S. Trade Restraints–Recommendations For Economic Revitalization In Indian Country, Angelique Eaglewoman

Faculty Scholarship

Tribal commerce created the current highways that stretch from coast-to-coast in North America today. The roads that are traveled by semi-trucks full of cargo, grocery produce, and all manner of commercial goods are on top of the ancient trade routes Natives have traveled for centuries. Unfortunately, the history and sophistication of Native commercial activities have been largely suppressed and left out of the story of the North American continent as Euro-Americans rewrote the continent’s history to reflect the glorification of colonization. The truth is that there was no need for the 'rugged pioneer' to cut through tall grass to head …