Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Tort Law Through Time And Culture: Themes Of Economic Efficiency, M Stuart Madden

M Stuart Madden

Hellenic philosophers assessed the goals of society as: (1) the protection of persons and property from wrongful harm; (2) protection of the individual’s means of survival and prosperity; (3) discouragement of self-aggrandizement to the detriment of others; and (4) elevation of individual knowledge that would carry forward and perfect such principles.

Roman law was replete with proscriptions against forced taking and unjust enrichment, and included rules for ex ante contract-based resolution of potential disagreement. Customary law perpetuated these efficient economic tenets within the Western World and beyond.

The common law, in turn, has nurtured many of the same ends. From …

Economic Theory’S Stance On No-Fault Divorce, Stéphane Mechoulan

Stéphane Mechoulan

This article explores key insights that economic theory can shed on the issue of no-fault divorce in the United States, addressing modifications in the incentive structure of individuals that resulted from the legislative reforms of the 1970s. After stressing the importance of correctly interpreting and classifying divorce laws, this work investigates the contributions of the theory of property rights, the contributions of game theory and intra-household bargaining, and the contributions of general equilibrium analysis in our understanding of how divorce laws work and what their impact is. By doing so, this exposé analyzes the theoretical consequences of no-fault divorce on …

Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie

Jeff L Yates

In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. …