Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Coordinating In The Shadow Of The Law: Two Contextualized Tests Of The Focal Point Theory Of Legal Compliance, Richard H. Mcadams, Janice Nadler
Coordinating In The Shadow Of The Law: Two Contextualized Tests Of The Focal Point Theory Of Legal Compliance, Richard H. Mcadams, Janice Nadler
Faculty Working Papers
In situations where people have an incentive to coordinate their behavior, law can provide a framework for understanding and predicting what others are likely to do. According to the focal point theory of expressive law, the law's articulation of a behavior can sometimes create self-fulfilling expectations that it will occur. Existing theories of legal compliance emphasize the effect of sanctions or legitimacy; we argue that, in addition to sanctions and legitimacy, law can also influence compliance simply by making one outcome salient. We tested this claim in two experiments where sanctions and legitimacy were held constant. Experiment 1 demonstrated that …
The Strategy Of Boilerplate, Robert B. Ahdieh
The Strategy Of Boilerplate, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
Boilerplate can be exciting. It is this, perhaps hard-to-swallow, proposition that the present analysis attempts to convey. Particularly in invoking the work of Thomas Schelling on the role of focal points in coordination games, it offers what can be characterized as a "strategic" theory of boilerplate, in which boilerplate plays an active, even aggressive, role.
Contrary to the relatively inert quality of boilerplate implied by conventional treatments in the legal literature, boilerplate may serve essential signaling and coordination functions in contract bargaining. In appropriate circumstances, its proposed usage may be a valuable weapon in the arsenal of a bargaining party, …