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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Origins, Nature, And Promise Of Empirical Legal Studies And A Response To Concerns, Theodore Eisenberg
The Origins, Nature, And Promise Of Empirical Legal Studies And A Response To Concerns, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Article describes the origins of three movements in legal academia: empirical legal studies (ELS), law and society, and law and economics. It then quantifies the distribution across scholarly fields (for example, economics and psychology) of authors in these movements’ journals and reports the impact of the movements’ scholarly journals. By focusing on two leading law and economics journals, this Article also explores the effect of a journal being centered in law schools rather than in a social science discipline. It suggests that ELS has achieved rapid growth and impact within the academic legal community because of (1) its association …
Mixed Signals: Rational-Choice Theories Of Social Norms And The Pragmatics Of Explanation, W. Bradley Wendel
Mixed Signals: Rational-Choice Theories Of Social Norms And The Pragmatics Of Explanation, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The question of how societies secure cooperation and order in the absence of state enforced sanctions has long vexed law and economics scholars. Recently the concept of social norms--informally enforced rules of behavior--has occupied the attention of a large number of these theorists, who are concerned with understanding why economically rational actors would bother to follow rules whose costs seem to outweigh their benefits. Because of the prestige (or at least trendiness) of law and economics, it seems that now everyone in the legal academy is talking about social norms. This burgeoning scholarship is closely related to a wider concern …
Employment Discrimination, Stewart J. Schwab
Employment Discrimination, Stewart J. Schwab
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article first parses the multiple overlapping definitions of discrimination, including distinctions between group and individual discrimination and between segregation and discrimination in pay. The article then summarizes the major economic models of discrimination, particularly Becker’s taste-for-discrimination model and statistical-discrimination models, as well as sorting the status-production models. The discussion focuses on the conditions under which markets will tend to eliminate discrimination, noting that this occurs in a more limited range of situations than commonly recognized. The article next surveys the economic role of anti-discrimination laws, evaluating arguments that the law speeds the journey to a non-discriminatory equilibrium and that …
The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics, George A. Hay
The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics, George A. Hay
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Any discussion about law and economics ought to begin with a definition or at least an explanation of what it is we are talking about. There is, however, a risk in starting there. Just as classics scholars may debate endlessly about who precisely should be counted as a classicist or philosophers might debate who can properly be counted as a Kantian, there is likely to be no consensus about precisely what counts as law and economics or who is doing it. Indeed, the acknowledged superstar and chief guru of the law and economics movement, Judge Richard Posner, has argued that, …