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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dual Origin Of The Duty To Disclose In Roman Law, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
The Dual Origin Of The Duty To Disclose In Roman Law, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Faculty Scholarship
The Roman law remedies for failure to disclose in sales contracts were developed by two different institutions: that of the aediles, with jurisdiction on market transactions effected through auctions, and that of the praetor, with general jurisdiction including private transactions. The aedilician remedies — the actiones redhibitoria and quanti minoris — allowed for rapid transactions and inexpensive litigation but generated some allocative losses ex post, as they did not incentivize the parties to exchange information about idiosyncratic characteristics of the goods for sale. In contrast, the remedy developed by the praetor — the actio ex empto — implied …
Agency Problems And Organizational Costs In Slave-Run Business, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Agency Problems And Organizational Costs In Slave-Run Business, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter examines the internal economic organization of the peculium servi communis — that is, of separate business assets assigned to a slave — and its (external) relationships with creditors. Literary, legal, and epigraphic evidence points predominantly to businesses of small or medium size, suggesting that there must have been some constraints to growth. We identify both agency problems arising within the business organization (governance problems) and agency problems arising between the business organization and its creditors (limited access to credit). We suggest that, although the praetorian remedies had a remarkable mitigating effect, agency problems operated as a constraint to …
The Inevitability And Ubiquity Of Cycling In All Feasible Legal Regimes: A Formal Proof, Leo Katz, Alvaro Sandroni
The Inevitability And Ubiquity Of Cycling In All Feasible Legal Regimes: A Formal Proof, Leo Katz, Alvaro Sandroni
All Faculty Scholarship
Intransitive choices, or cycling, are generally held to be the mark of irrationality. When a set of rules engenders such choices, it is usually held to be irrational and in need of reform. In this article, we prove a series of theorems, demonstrating that all feasible legal regimes are going to be rife with cycling. Our first result, the legal cycling theorem, shows that unless a legal system meets some extremely restrictive conditions, it will lead to cycling. The discussion that follows, along with our second result, the combination theorem, shows exactly why these conditions are almost impossible to meet. …
Liquid Assets: A Coasian Economic Analysis Of Oregon's Allocation Of Conserved Water Program, Richard A. Grisel
Liquid Assets: A Coasian Economic Analysis Of Oregon's Allocation Of Conserved Water Program, Richard A. Grisel
Richard A Grisel
Diversions for residential, agricultural, recreational, commercial, industrial, and other beneficial uses have had the effect of removing water from rivers and tributaries throughout the western U.S. Another, more recent, competing use is ecological, demonstrated by the legal recognition of instream beneficial uses in some jurisdictions. As awareness of the progressively acute need for reallocation has increased in the arid West, so has interest in water markets and other mechanisms to facilitate transfers across beneficial uses. However, governments and water users face a legacy prior appropriation system that prohibits instream beneficial uses, encourages maximal diversion, stifles water right fungibility, and generally …
The Social Value Of Mortality Risk Reduction: Vsl Vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach, Matthew D. Adler, James K. Hammitt, Nicholas Treich
The Social Value Of Mortality Risk Reduction: Vsl Vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach, Matthew D. Adler, James K. Hammitt, Nicholas Treich
All Faculty Scholarship
We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk-reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost-benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach—and three benchmark social welfare functions (SWF): a utilitarian SWF, an ex ante prioritarian SWF, and an ex post prioritarian SWF. We examine the conditions on individual utility and on the SWF under which these frameworks display the following five properties: i) wealth sensitivity, ii) sensitivity to baseline risk, iii) equal value of risk reduction, iv) preference for risk equity, and v) catastrophe aversion. We show that the particular manner in which VSL …
How Much Does A Belief Cost?: Revisiting The Marketplace Of Ideas, Gregory Brazeal
How Much Does A Belief Cost?: Revisiting The Marketplace Of Ideas, Gregory Brazeal
Gregory Brazeal
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is often credited with creating the metaphor of “the marketplace of ideas,” though he did not use the exact phrase and his argument for free speech was not based on distinctively economic reasoning. Truly economic investigations of the marketplace of ideas have progressed in step with developments and trends in the law and economics literature. These investigations have tended to be one-sided, with writers focusing primarily either on the production of ideas (for example, Posner) or their consumption (for example, behavioral law and economics), without considering in depth how producers and consumers interact. This may …
Custom, Comedy, And The Value Of Dissent, Jennifer E. Rothman
Custom, Comedy, And The Value Of Dissent, Jennifer E. Rothman
All Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, I comment on Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman's article, There's No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, 94 Va. L. Rev. 1787 (2008). Their study of the quasi-intellectual property norms in the stand-up comedy world provides yet another compelling example of the phenomenon that I have explored in which the governing intellectual property regime takes a backseat to social norms and other industry customs that dominate the lived experiences of many in creative fields. The microcosm of stand-up comedy reinforces my concern that customs are being used to …
The Normativity Of Law In Law And Economics, Péter Cserne
The Normativity Of Law In Law And Economics, Péter Cserne
Péter Cserne
This paper is about some theoretical and methodological problems of law and economics. I will use game theoretical insights to address an issue which is relevant both for law and economics and legal philosophy: How should a social scientific analysis of law account for the normativity of law, i.e. the non-instrumental reasons for rule-following while retaining the observer’s (explanatory or descriptive) perspective. My goal is to offer a constructive critique of both traditional law and economics scholarship and mainstream analytical legal philosophy in this respect. I will try to find out how law and economics has to account for the …