The Deep Grammar Of Distribution: A Meta-Theory Of Justice,
2014
Cornell Law School
The Deep Grammar Of Distribution: A Meta-Theory Of Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Review Essay: The Limits Of Their World,
2014
Cornell Law School
Review Essay: The Limits Of Their World, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
I take a recent monograph on international law, Jack Goldsmith & Eric Posner's "Limits of International Law," as case study in a more general inquiry into the limitations of rational choice and game theoretic accounts of international law. I argue that international law is irreducibly normative in character, and that the task before us is to ensure that it gives expression to the right norms, not to pretend that it gives expression to no norms at all.
Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan,
2014
Cornell Law School
Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
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 …
Were “It” To Happen: Contract Continuity Under Euro Regime Change,
2014
Selected Works
Were “It” To Happen: Contract Continuity Under Euro Regime Change, Robert Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics,
2014
Cornell Law School
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This Article, transcribed from a symposium talk given by the author, examines two critical junctures at which foundational decisions must be made in three areas of theoretical inquiry - mathematics, law, and economics. The first such juncture is that which the Article labels the "arbitrary versus criterial choice" juncture. This is the decision point at which one must select between what is typically called an "algorithmic," "principled," "law-like," or "intensionalist" understanding of those concepts which figure foundationally in the discipline in question on the one hand, and a "randomized," "combinatorial," or "extensionalist" such understanding on the other hand. The second …
Materializing Citizenship: Finance In A Producers' Republic,
2014
Cornell Law School
Materializing Citizenship: Finance In A Producers' Republic, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This invited essay critically assesses a movement of which I consider myself to be part – the movement to “redemocratize” financial institutions in a manner that restores, to non-wealthy citizens, access to basic financial services comparable to those enjoyed by wealthy citizens. I argue that while financial redemocratization of this sort is necessary to the larger project from which it draws most of its meaning – viz that of redemocratizing access to the resources requisite to productive enterprise and meaningful citizenship more generally – it is far from sufficient to this task. We must therefore take special care not to …
Justice In Time,
2014
Cornell Law School
Justice In Time, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Challenges raised by the subject of intergenerational justice seem often to be thought almost uniquely intractable. In particular, apparent conflicts between the core values of impartiality and efficiency raised by a large and still growing number of intertemporal impossibility results derived by Koopmans, Diamond, Basu & Mitra, and others have been taken to foreclose fruitful policy assessment done with a view to the distant future. This Essay aims to dispel the sense of bewilderment, pessimism and attendant paralysis that afflicts intertemporal justice assessment. It works toward that end by demonstrating that the most vexing puzzles raised by questions of intergenerational …
Paying Paul And Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution For Underwater Mortgage Debt,
2014
Cornell Law School
Paying Paul And Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution For Underwater Mortgage Debt, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners — those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth — is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to carry out, since loan modifications on the scale necessitated by the housing market crash would require collective action by a multitude of geographically dispersed security holders. The solution, this study suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up and restructure underwater mortgages, …
Pareto Versus Welfare,
2014
Cornell Law School
Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Many normatively oriented economists, legal academics and other policy analysts appear to be "welfarist" and Paretian to at least moderate degree: They deem positive responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the familiar Pareto criteria, to be reasonably undemanding and desirable attributes of any social welfare function (SWF) employed to formulate social evaluations. Some theorists and analysts go further than moderate welfarism or Paretianism, however: They argue that "the Pareto principle" requires the SWF be responsive to individual preferences alone - a position I label "strict" welfarism - and conclude that all social evaluation should in …
“Private” Means To “Public” Ends: Governments As Market Actors,
2014
Cornell Law School
“Private” Means To “Public” Ends: Governments As Market Actors, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova
Robert C. Hockett
Many people recognize that governments can play salutary roles in relation to markets by (a) “overseeing” market behavior from “above,” or (b) supplying foundational “rules of the game” from “below.” It is probably no accident that these widely recognized roles also sit comfortably with traditional conceptions of government and market, pursuant to which people tend categorically to distinguish between “public” and “private” spheres of activity. There is a third form of government action that receives less attention than forms (a) and (b), however, possibly owing in part to its straddling the traditional public/private divide. We call it the “government as …
From "Mission-Creep" To Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance, The Ifis, And The Intended Beneficiaries Of Globalization,
2014
Cornell Law School
From "Mission-Creep" To Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance, The Ifis, And The Intended Beneficiaries Of Globalization, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Bringing It All Back Home: How To Save Main Street, Ignore K Street, And Thereby Save Wall Street,
2014
Cornell Law School
Bringing It All Back Home: How To Save Main Street, Ignore K Street, And Thereby Save Wall Street, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo,
2014
Cornell Law School
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
The bailout strategy now being pursued by Treasury under the recently authorized Troubled Asset Relief Plan, if “strategy” it can be called, remains obscure and erratic at best. All the while markets remain jittery and credit remains tight, as the underlying source of our present financial jitters—continued decline in the housing market and still mounting foreclosures—goes unaddressed. This piece proposes an interesting and novel approach to solving the financial problem. If it works out, it would eventually minimize the cost to the government.
Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance,
2014
Cornell Law School
Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Global trade imbalance and domestic financial fragility are intimately related. When a nation runs persistently massive current account deficits to maintain global liquidity as has the United States now for decades, its central bank effectively relinquishes exchange rate flexibility to become a de facto central bank to the world. That in turn prevents the bank from playing its essential credit-modulatory role at home, at least absent strict capital controls that are difficult to administer and have long been taboo. And this can in turn render credit-fueled asset price bubbles and busts all but impossible to prevent, irrespective of the nation's …
Why (Only) Esops?,
2014
Cornell Law School
Taking Distribution Seriously,
2014
Cornell Law School
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
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 …
Legally Defending Mission-Creep: How The Bretton Woods Charters Anticipate And Justify Imf Attention To "Structural" Variables In Its Oversight Of The Global Financial System,
2014
Cornell Law School
Legally Defending Mission-Creep: How The Bretton Woods Charters Anticipate And Justify Imf Attention To "Structural" Variables In Its Oversight Of The Global Financial System, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice,
2014
Cornell Law School
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
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 …
A Federalist Blessing In Disguise: From National Inaction To Local Action On Underwater Mortgages,
2014
Cornell Law School
A Federalist Blessing In Disguise: From National Inaction To Local Action On Underwater Mortgages, Robert C. Hockett, John Vlahoplus
Robert C. Hockett
While it is widely recognized that the mortgage debt overhang left by the housing price bubble and bust continues to operate as the principal drag upon U.S. macroeconomic recovery, few seem to appreciate just how locally concentrated the problem is. This paper takes the measure of the national mortgage debt overhang problem as a cluster of local problems warranting local action. It then elaborates on one form of such action that the localized nature of the ongoing mortgage crisis justifies - use of municipal eminent domain authority to purchase underwater loans, then modify them in a manner that benefits debtors, …
Valuing The Waiver: The Real Beauty Of Ex Ante Over Ex Post,
2014
Cornell Law School
Valuing The Waiver: The Real Beauty Of Ex Ante Over Ex Post, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Irony abounds in connection with demands and proposals made, in the wake of the Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate scandals, that firms be required or encouraged to waive attorney-client privilege. Justice Department officials speak to the importance of "getting at the truth" as trumping firms' interest in confidential internal communications as a prerequisite to compliance with law. They do so notwithstanding their own contrary arguments made on behalf of the secretive Bush administration that employs them. Corporate officers, for their part, speak as though Ralph Nader were the Attorney General when they denounce waiver proposals. They do so notwithstanding the …
