Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Happiness And Punishment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, John Bronsteen, Jonathan S. Masur

All Faculty Scholarship

This article continues our project to apply groundbreaking new literature on the behavioral psychology of human happiness to some of the most deeply analyzed questions in law. Here we explain that the new psychological understandings of happiness interact in startling ways with the leading theories of criminal punishment. Punishment theorists, both retributivist and utilitarian, have failed to account for human beings' ability to adapt to changed circumstances, including fines and (surprisingly) imprisonment. At the same time, these theorists have largely ignored the severe hedonic losses brought about by the post-prison social and economic deprivations (unemployment, divorce, and disease) caused by …

Slides: Threats To Biological Diversity: Global, Continental, Local, J. Michael Scott

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: J. Michael Scott, U.S. Geological Survey, Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Idaho

38 slides

Illness And Inability To Repay: The Role Of Debtor Health In The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

For a debtor to obtain a discharge of student loans in bankruptcy, the debtor must establish that their repayment would impose an undue hardship. This Article presents the results of an empirical study of bankruptcy court doctrine over a ten-year period that involved undue hardship discharge proceedings where the court reported information on the debtor's health status, monthly household income, and monthly household expenses. The data show that a medical condition increased a debtor's odds of being granted a discharge by 140% but that household income and expense levels did not have a statistically significant association with legal outcome. These …