Digital Commons Network^™

Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler

Articles

No abstract provided.

Moral Heuristics And Moral Framing Lecture, Cass R. Sunstein

Articles

No abstract provided.

On The Psychology Of Punishment, Cass R. Sunstein

Articles

Are juries rational or irrational? In the context of punitive damage awards, jury decisions suffer from serious problems. Jurors are intuitive retributivists, in a way that produces departures from economic theories of punishment. Their decisions are rooted in outrage, which they cannot easily translate into dollar terms. The result is a degree of unpredictability and incoherence. An understanding of this point casts light on several problems with existing institutions and offers some clues about how those problems might be solved.

The Rights Of Animals, Cass R. Sunstein

Articles

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Precautionary Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Articles

The precautionary principle has been highly influential in legal systems all over the world. In its strongest and most distinctive forms, the principle imposes a burden of proof on those who create potential risks, and it requires regulation of activities even if it cannot be shown that those activities are likely to produce significant harms. Taken in this strong form, the precautionary principle should be rejected, not because it leads in bad directions, but because it leads in no direction at all. The principle is literally paralyzing-forbidding inaction, stringent regulation, and everything in between. The reason is that in the …

Naturalized Epistemology And The Law Of Evidence: Reply To Redmayne, Ronald J. Allen, Brian Leiter

Articles

No abstract provided.

Ellman's "Why Making Family Law Is Hard": Additional Reflections, Robert Levy

Articles

Not the least of the pleasures of membership in this distinguished group invited to praise Ira Ellman was the opportunity it gave me to renew old and dear friendships with Arizona State faculty members and their spouses, to come back to the scene of my "adjunct visitor" gig last year, to see once again an effective dean whom I greatly admire. More important, the occasion allows me to praise publicly a scholar whose creative thinking, academic writing, legislative drafting and public performances as Reporter for the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution I have long respected.

The Limitations Of Limited Liability: Lessons For Entrepreneurs (And Their Attorneys), John H. Matheson

Articles

An entrepreneur does not start a new business expecting it to fail. Yet, according to various statistics, most independent start-up businesses fail within the first year, while as many as 90% are no longer in business after three years. This is why the issue of personal liability for the owners of the business is critical. Historically, the entrepreneur could protect personal assets by forming and operating the business as a corporation, recognized by state law as a legal entity separate from the owner of the business for purposes of imposing liability. Although operating a business as a corporation presumptively shields …

The Economists' New Arguments, Brett Mcdonnell

Articles

Adam and Max, two law professors and longtime friends, have just run into each other at an Association of American Law Schools (AALS) meeting. Adam has long been a zealous partisan of the law and economics approach to legal analysis. Max, though he has some training in economics, is more skeptical about that approach. The two old friends have discussed various aspects of this subject over the years, and in this meeting they renew their discussion. The topic this time: Fairness Versus Welfare, 1 the new book (formerly a mammoth article in the Harvard Law Review) 2 by two leading …

State Interest And Marriage--The Theoretical Perspective, Brian H. Bix

Articles

By the conference description, we are to consider "the relationship of marriage and self-government." 2 It is hard to analyze the relationship of these two, because they are "moving targets." Everyone thinks they know what is meant by "marriage," but as the debate ensues about the extension (e.g., to same-sex couples) and modification (e.g., for covenant marriage rules) of marriage, and our social norms about the roles of parents (married or not) and spouses change, one might wonder how much is certain and agreed upon and how much is fluid and up for review and revision. 3

Race, Politics, And Juvenile Justice: The Warren Court And The Conservative "Backlash", Barry C. Feld

Articles

A century ago, the Progressive reformers who created the juvenile court embraced a particular ideological construction of childhood as one of innocence and vulnerability. They also adopted a scientific conception of social control - positive criminology - that attempted to identify the causes of criminality and purported to treat, rather than to punish, offenders. The juvenile court combined the new conception of childhood with the new strategies of positive criminology to create a judicial-welfare alternative to the adult criminal process for juveniles. The juvenile court affirmed the responsibility of families to raise their children while expanding the state's prerogative to …

Teaching Adr In The Workplace Once And Again: A Pedagogical History, Laura J. Cooper

Articles

During the summer there was a conference in Ann Arbor, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools, to address whether law schools could better prepare students to represent the interests of employees and employ- ers. The conference planners took care to include as participants notjust law school teachers, but also practitioners who could more accurately describe the role of attorneys in representing worker and employer interests and how students could best be educated to serve those roles. Conference participants concluded that current law school courses were inappropriately focused on the adversarial role of lawyers in litigation. They decided that …

Competence, Culpability, And Punishment: Implications Of Atkins For Executing And Sentencing Adolescents, Barry C. Feld

Articles

The Supreme Court has explored the issues of culpability, proportionality, and deserved punishment most fully in the context of capital punishment. In death penalty decisions addressing developmental impairments and culpability, the Court has considered the cases of defendants with mental retardation and older adolescents, and has created an anomalous inconsistency by reaching opposite conclusions about the deserved punishment for each group of defendants. Recently, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court relied on both empirical and normative justifications to categorically prohibit states from executing defendants with mental retardation. Atkins reasoned that mentally retarded offenders lacked the reasoning, judgment, and impulse control …

Revisiting The Black Hole Of Workplace Regulation: A Historical And Comparative Perspective Of Contingent Work, Stephen F. Befort

Articles

A dramatic shift in the nature of work relationships in the United States has occurred during the past two decades. Long-term employment constituted the predominant model of structuring work relationships well into the 1970s. Since then, American firms increasingly have resorted to a variety of non-traditional work arrangements. These new workers, frequently denominated the "contingent workforce," tend to have a weaker workplace affiliation and a lower expectation of long-term employment.'

Silence Compounded - The Conjunction Of Race And Gender Violence, Zanita E. Fenton

Articles

No abstract provided.

Addressing Domestic Violence Through A Strategy Of Economic Rights, Donna Coker

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Capital Jury And Empathy: The Problem Of Worthy And Unworthy Victims, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

Retrying Race, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Trials And Tribulations: Science In The Law, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Squeezing Daubert Out Of The Picture, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this essay, I will offer some thoughts on how we might reframe the issues governing the admissibility of expert evidence. My principal focus is not on any particular type of expert evidence but on broader questions: the extent to which we ought to rely on rulings of admissibility, the standards that should govern admissibility rulings, and the role of the trial and appellate courts in making those rulings. To some extent, I will concentrate on the context of criminal cases, but for the most part my conclusions apply in both civil and criminal litigation. Here are my conclusions: First, …

Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman

Articles

A great deal of the rhetoric of evidence discourse concerns the supposed cognitive inadequacies of the jury. In various contexts we are told that although an item of evidence is probative, it must be excluded because the jury will give it too much weight. I believe this approach has played far too great a role in evidentiary law, and that it is an interesting project to see whether we can construct a satisfactory body of law without relying at all on the cognitive inadequacy argument. I think that, at least to a large extent, we can. In some settings, where …

How Much Do We Really Know About Race And Juries? A Review Of Social Science Theory And Research, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The past decade has witnessed numerous high-profile criminal trials in which controversial verdicts have been attributed to racethe race of the defendant, the racial composition of a jury, an attorney "playing the race card," and so on. A predominantly Black jury's acquittal of O.J. Simpson and White jurors' leniency in the police brutality cases of Rodney King and Amadou Diallo not only sparked public debate, but also led to rioting and violence. In the wake of trials such as these, many have questioned the viability of the American jury system.' More specific questions regarding the influence of race on jury …

On Researching Music In Everyday Life:Assessing The Musician As Producer Of Commercialised Music, Alan Bradshaw, Roger Sherlock, Pierre Mcdonagh

Articles

Adorno & Horkheimer (1998) argue that the Culture Industry generates cultural artefacts that fail to develop human consciousness and hence support the domination of the capitalist system. Steinert (2003) states that the pressures facing musicians to negotiate between the demands of the culture industry and the traditional role of the artist generates a fundamental contradiction within art which is symbolically enacted through artistic production. This study, which draws on on-going postgraduate research aims to develop a research framework that investigates how musicians negotiate this contradiction. The study considers if a more reflexive approach to art exists, typified by the Pop …

Risk Management And Organizational Governance: The Case Of Enron, Robert Eli Rosen

Articles

No abstract provided.

Substantially Limited Justice?: The Possibilities And Limits Of A New Rawlsian Analysis Of Disability-Based Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

John Rawls has been called the most significant and influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century, and his ideas have deeply influenced discussions of social, political, and economic justice across disciplines including law, philosophy, and political science. Given his preeminence, does Rawls's theory of justice as fairness fail in either of the two ways described above or is it a promising analysis for achieving justice for people with disabilities?

In its most recent terms, the Supreme Court has increasingly turned its attention toward the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (the ADA). In several significant decisions, it has grappled with …

Why Theories Of Law Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Judicial Restraint, Philip E. Soper

Articles

The question I explore here, stated in its broadest form, is this: What is the connection between theory and practice between academic claims about how judges should decide cases and the actual behavior of judges as revealed in the opinions they write? More particularly, do theories about the nature of law have any implications for the question whether a judge should adopt an "activist" or a "restrained" approach to deciding cases? As you might infer from my title, I defend here what I call "the skeptical thesis" in answer to both the general and particular questions. Judges pay little or …

Legal Transitions, Rational Expectations, And Legal Progress, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

In the literature on legal transitions, the term "transition policy" is generally understood to mean a rule or norm that influences policymakers' decisions concerning the extent to which legal change should be accompanied by transition relief, whether in the form of grandfathering or phase-ins or direct compensation. Legal change within this literature is defined broadly, and somewhat counter-intuitively, to include any resolution of the uncertainty regarding what the law will be in the future or how the law will be applied to future circumstances. Thus, a legal change would obviously include an unexpected repeal of a tax provision, such as …

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

Behavioral Economics And The Sec, Stephen J. Choi, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Not all investors are rational. Quite apart from the obvious examples of credulity in the face of the latest Ponzi scheme, there is no shortage of evidence that many investors' decisions are influenced by systematic biases that impair their abilities to maximize their investment returns. For example, investors will often hold onto poorly performing stocks longer than warranted, hoping to recoup their losses. Other investors will engage in speculative trading, dissipating their returns by paying larger commissions than more passive investors. And we are not just talking about widows and orphans here. There is evidence that supposedly sophisticated institutional investors-mutual …

A Resident Of Evidenceland Defends His Turf, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

A few years ago, I wrote an essay welcoming Judge Richard Posner down from a star to Evidenceland, the sometimes obscure province occupied by evidence scholars.1 Although I criticized one of the points of his article on the economics of evidence law, I expressed the hope that he would remain in Evidenceland for an extended stay.2 I should have known that if he did so he would tell us long-term inhabitants what we have been doing wrong.