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Predicting Crime, M. Todd Henderson, Justin Wolfers, Eric Zitzewitz

Articles

Prediction markets have been proposed for a variety of public policy purposes, but no one has considered their application in perhaps the most obvious policy area.: crime. This Article proposes and examines the use of prediction markets to forecast crime rates and the potential impact on crime policy, such as changes in resource allocation, policing strategies, sentencing, post-conviction treatment, and so on. First, we argue that prediction markets are especially useful in crime rate forecasting and criminal policy analysis because information relevant to decisionmakers is voluminous, dispersed, and difficult to process efficiently. After surveying the current forecasting practices and techniques, …

Booker Reconsidered, Jonathan Masur

Articles

No abstract provided.

Kant, Habermas And Democratic Peace, Robert J. Delahunty, John Yoo

Chicago Journal of International Law

Our core claim, then, is this: Habermas conceives the "Kantian project" to be one of securing global peace and upholding basic human rights through strengthening and expanding supranational and transnational institutions. In substance, he is offering a kind of Kantian world federalism as the way forward for the global community of states. We consider that approach fundamentally mistaken. In our view, democracy-promotion is clearly the better path. It recognizes the necessity and desirability of a plurality of independent nation states. It is more protective of both the freedom of individuals and the cultural identities of peoples. It is far more …

Legal Ethics In International Criminal Defense, Jenia Iontcheva Turner

Chicago Journal of International Law

I argue that distinctive features of international criminal courts and prosecutions suggest a more flexible approach to the ethical norms governing defense advocacy, closer to that embodied by the Model Rules. Moreover, I suggest that international criminal courts should promulgate guidelines which convey to defense attorneys that particular aggressive practices are not required by ethical duties and that such practices may be more inconsistent than consistent with good defense lawyering. I do not propose additional rules that would absolutely prohibit such practices in international courts. Nor do I suggest that defense attorneys should ever fail to diligently and zealously represent …

The United States And Human Rights Treaties: Race Relations, The Cold War, And Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Articles

The United States prides itself on being a champion of human rights and pressures other countries to improve their human rights practices, and yet appears less willing than other nations to embrace international human rights treaties. Many commentators attribute this phenomenon to the particular historical context that existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s when human rights treaties were first being developed. These commentators especially emphasize the race relations of the time, noting that some conservatives resisted the developing human rights regime because they saw it as an effort by the federal government to extend its authority to address …

Fast-Track Sentencing Disparity: Rereading Congressional Intent To Resolve The Circuit Split, Thomas E. Gorman

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Retributivism Refined—Or Run Amok? (Reviewing Crime And Culpability: A Theory Of Criminal Law By Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, Stephen Morse), Kenneth W. Simons

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

Debacle: How The Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended, Frank O. Bowman Iii

University of Chicago Law Review

This Article argues that the line of Supreme Court Sixth Amendment jury right cases that began with McMillan v Pennsylvania in 1986, crescendoed in Blakely v Washington and United States v Booker in 2004-2005, and continues in cases such as Oregon v Ice, is a colossal judicial failure. First, the Court has failed to provide a logically coherent, constitutionally based answer to the fundamental question of what limits the Constitution places on the roles played by the institutional actors in the criminal justice system. It has failed to recognize that defining, adjudicating, and punishing crimes implicates both the Sixth Amendment …

The Future Of Taxation, Joseph Isenbergh

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Arbitrator As Agent: Why Deferential Review Is Not Always Pro-Arbitration, Tom Ginsburg

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Pre-Closing Liability, Omri Ben-Shahar

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Two years after Penzoil v. Texaco threatened to burst the seam of contract formation and find binding commitments before negotiations ended, Judge Easterbrook stitched the rupture. His landmark decision in Empro v. Ball Co. held that a letter-of-intent, which is subject to the preparation of a more comprehensive formal document, is not binding. Each party can freely walk away from it prior to the closing, without incurring any liability and without the court scrutinizing the reasons for the negotiations breakdown. Many courts have since cited and followed Judge Easterbrook's approach. In this commentary, I argue that that this freedom to …

A Minimalist Charter Of Rights For Australia: The U.K. Or Canada As A Model?, Rosalind Dixon

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Ambiguous Statutes, Saul Levmore

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Judge Frank Easterbrook is known for insisting that legislative intent is a misconception, bordering on oxymoron. He has also advanced the idea that legislative bargains should be upheld by courts and that where a legislature leaves a “gap,” courts should be non-activis rather than eager gap-fillers. Still, there are many cases where legislation leaves ambiguities. I suggest that the cause of an ambiguity has some bearing on the best way for a judge to resolve it. Easterbrook decisions, including an Equal Pay Act case, where (unequal) wages were based on prior compensation, are used to reveal various strategies for dealing …

Nra V. City Of Chicago: Does The Second Amendment Bind Frank Easterbrook?, Richard A. Epstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

In NRA v. City of Chicago, Judge Easterbrook held that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, did not bind state governments. This article examines the reasoning that he uses to reach that result, which it contrasts with the style of argumentation that led to the opposite conclusion in Judge O'Scannlain's decision in Norkdye v. King. Easterbrook's approach emphasized the imperative need for lower court deference to the Supreme Court's explicit Reconstruction Era holdings that the Second Amendment does not bind the states, even after the Supreme Court's game-changing decision in District of Columbia V. …

Procd V. Zeidenberg And Cognitive Overload In Contractual Bargaining, Eric A. Posner

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Judge Frank Easterbrook's opinion in ProCD v. Zeidenberg has been heavily criticized for ignoring the law and making unrealistic assumptions about the ability of consumers to read and understand contract terms. This contribution to a symposium on Judge Easterbrook's judicial output argues that the opinion is a classic example of the manipulation of legal doctrine to advance a policy goal— here, enabling sellers to communicate contract terms when buyers' time and attention are limited. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Judge Easterbrook implicitly assumes that buyers are fallible, not hyperrational; his doctrinal solution persuasively addresses the problem of cognitive overload while …

Assessing Competition Issues In The Amended Google Book Search Settlement, Randal C. Picker

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Easterbrook On Copyright, Randal C. Picker

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Law School Announcements 2009-2010, Law School Announcements Editors

Announcements

• Officers and Faculty
• The Law School - History
• Programs of Instruction
• Curriculum
• Student Activities and Organizations
• Funds and Endowments

Law School Record, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Fall 2009), Law School Record Editors

Law School Record

• Your Law School, Only Better: The Deanship of Saul Levmore
• Why Iago Dissuaded Othello from Using Poison: A Legal Theory
• Building a Future on a Strong Foundation
• The Transformation of the Legal Profession: Convocation Address June 12, 2009
• Bill Landes, Professor Emeritus
• New Ethics Class Gives Law Students More Realistic Dilemmas

Gone, But Not Forgotten? Habeas Corpus For Necessary Predicate Offenses, Garrett Ordower

University of Chicago Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Exchange, Douglas G. Baird

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Holmesian Bad Man’S First Critic, Douglas G. Baird

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Modernizing Mission Of Judicial Review, David A. Strauss

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Constitutional interpretation, as it is usually conceived, looks to the past—to an old text, to history, to precedent, to tradition—in an effort to limit political majorities. But over the last generation or so, a different approach to the Constitution has emerged. That approach, which might be called modernization, tries to anticipate trends in public opinion instead of taking lessons from the past; and a modernizing court, instead of facing down popular majorities, yields when it finds out that it has misgauged public opinion. This modernizing approach has characterized the Supreme Court’s recent work in many disparate areas, including, among others, …

Nietzsche's Philosophy Of Action, Brian Leiter

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Happiness And Punishment, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan Masur

University of Chicago Law Review

This Article continues our project of applying new findings in the behavioral psychology of human happiness to some of the most deeply analyzed questions in law. When a state decides how to punish criminal offenders, at least one important consideration is the amount of harm any given punishment is likely to inflict. It would be undesirable, for example, to impose greater harm on those who commit less serious crimes or to impose harm that rises to the level of cruelty. Our penal system fits punishments to crimes primarily by adjusting the size of monetary fines and the length of prison …

Can You Hear Me Now? The Case For Extending The International Judicial Network, Cesare P.R. Romano

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Article intends to take stock of almost two decades of tumultuous multiplication of judicial institutions, which has led to at least more than a dozen fully functioning international courts and several dozen quasi-judicial, implementation-control and sundry dispute-settlement bodies. The growth has been organic and unplanned. The stated aim of this panoply of bodies and procedures is to ensure that international law is observed and that disputes arising out of its implementation or interpretation are settled peacefully and in an orderly fashion. But one could ask whether, and to what extent, this remarkable growth of bodies and procedures has brought …

Why Different Jurisdictions Do Not (And Should Not) Adopt The Same Antitrust Rules, David S. Evans

Chicago Journal of International Law

A single dish cannot serve the tastes of a hundred people, says an ancient Chinese proverb. So it is with the rules for assessing whether practices engaged in by firms with significant market power are anticompetitive. More than one hundred countries have competition laws and most of them have government authorities entrusted with enforcing those laws in the first instance. Yet these jurisdictions are a varied lot. Some have emerged from decades of communist rule while others have only recently privatized companies responsible for substantial parts of the economy. Their legal institutions differ, as do perhaps their tastes for dominant …

Randomization In Criminal Justice: A Criminal Law Conversation, Michael O'Hear, Bernard E. Harcourt, A. Harel, Ken Levy, Alice Ristroph

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

A Criminal Law Conversation, Bernard E. Harcourt, Alon Harel, Ken Levy, Michael O'Hear, Alice Ristroph

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Modernizing Mission Of Judicial Review, David A. Strauss

University of Chicago Law Review

Constitutional interpretation, as it is usually conceived, looks to the past—to an old text, to history, to precedent, to tradition—in an effort to limit political majorities. But over the last generation or so, a different approach to the Constitution has emerged. That approach, which might be called modernization, tries to anticipate trends in public opinion instead of taking lessons from the past; and a modernizing court, instead of facing down popular majorities, yields when it finds out that it has misgauged public opinion. This modernizing approach has characterized the Supreme Court's recent work in many disparate areas, including, among others, …