Law Commons^™

Knowledge At Work: Disputes Over The Ownership Of Human Capital In The Changing Workplace, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Globalization In Financial Services - What Role For Gats?, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Investor Confidence Game, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Academic discussions of securities policy often assume that investors are hyperrational and distrustful actors who do not need the protections of the securities laws to avoid being defrauded. The time has come to recognize the limitations of this assumption and to consider as well the possibility and implications of investor trust. Experienced policymakers and businesspeople (and certainly experienced con artists) have long known that trust is a potent force in explaining and manipulating investor behavior. They are right. They are right to believe that investor confidence-meaning investor trust-is important to the market. They are right to think that trust has …

Megafirms, Randall S. Thomas, Stewart J. Schwab, Robert G. Hansen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article documents and explains the amazing growth of the largest firms in law, accounting, and investment banking. Scholars to date have used various supply-side theories to explain this growth, and have generally examined only one industry at a time. This Article emphasizes a demand-side explanation of firm growth and shows how the explanation is similar for firms in all "project" industries. Legal regulation also plays an important role in determining industry structure. Among the areas covered in this Article are the growth of Multidisciplinary Practice firms (MDPs). MDP growth can best be understood by looking more broadly at the …

Nonlegal Regulation Of The Legal Profession: Social Norms In Professional Communities, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What should be done about lawyers who persist in violating ethical norms that are not embodied in positive disciplinary rules? That question has been a recurrent theme in recent legal ethics scholarship. One response has been to propose, experiment, amend, tinker, draft, comment, and redraft, in an attempt to codify the standard of conduct observed to be flouted widely by the practicing bar. Bar associations and courts are seemingly engaged in a never-ending process of promulgating new codes of professional conduct or rules of procedure under which lawyers may be sanctioned for such conduct as bringing frivolous lawsuits, abusing the …

Constitution-Making In Africa: Assessing Both The Process And The Content, Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Predicting The Future Of Employment Law: Reflecting Or Refracting Market Forces?, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Article I predict how employment law will change in the future. My task is positive rather than normative. I will not argue that the developments I foresee are good ones to be applauded. Rather, they arise "inevitably" from the way the law will react to changes in labor markets.

Of course, as Professor Ronald Dworkin emphasizes, in developing a theory of law one cannot sharply distinguish between the positive and normative. Dworkin points out that even in describing the current legal framework, one must choose what to highlight and what to ignore, a process based on values. When …

Constitutional Change And International Government, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Globalization And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The "New" Law And Psychology: A Reply To Critics, Skeptics, And Cautious Supporters, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Balance-Of-Payments Crises In The Developing World: Balancing Trade, Finance And Development In The New Economic Order, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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 Limits Of Behavioral Decision Theory In Legal Analysis: The Case Of Liquidated Damages, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Discontent with the apparent tunnel vision of economic analysis of law's rational choice theory, legal scholars recently have turned with enthusiasm to "behavioral decision theory" (BDT) to enrich their understanding of how people make decisions and of the law's effect on human behavior. This article, for the first time, evaluates BDT's potential contribution to legal analysis by focusing on a single, important legal paradox: Despite contract law's freedom of contract paradigm, courts actively and enthusiastically police agreed damages provisions. Although the article finds an important place in legal analysis for this new discipline, the article raises and discusses several obstacles …

Critical Race Theory And Postcolonial Development Theory: Observations On Methodology, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Does The "Good Governance Policy" Of The International Financial Institutions Privilege Markets At The Expense Of Democracy?, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Transfer Of Technology In The Contemporary International Order, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Employment Contract, Ian Ayres, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article consists of Professors Ian Ayres and Stewart Schwab 's presentation given at the Economic Analysis of State Employment Law Issues Symposium. Following the presentation, audience members and the presenters participated in a discussion concerning employment contracts. The Journal staff and Professors Ayres and Schwab compiled and edited some of these questions and responses.

African Integration Schemes: A Case Study Of The Southern African Development Community, Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Causes Of Inequality In The International Economic Order: Critical Race Theory And Postcolonial Development, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Remedies And The Psychology Of Ownership, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Irrational Expectations, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Rational expectations models have become a staple of economic theory and the basis for a Nobel Prize. This article argues that rational expectations analysis suffers from potentially fatal flaws that seriously undermine its value in understanding many market phenomena. Using the example of financial markets, the article illustrates how the rational expectations approach has worked to obscure, rather than to illuminate, our understanding of speculation and speculative markets. This misguidance raises problems for law and policy.

How Will Welfare Recipients Fare In The Labor Market?, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Sheldon Danziger

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Need For The Harmonisation Of Trade Laws In The Southern African Development Community (Sadc), Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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, …

Labor And The Global Economy: Four Approaches To Transnational Labor Regulation, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Ronald Coase's essay on "The Problem of Social Cost" introduced the world to transaction costs, and the introduction laid the foundation for an ongoing cottage industry in law and economics. And of all the law-and-economics scholarship built on Coase's insights, perhaps the most widely known and influential contribution has been Calabresi and Melamed's discussion of what they called "property rules" and "liability rules." Those rules and the methodology behind them are our subjects here.

We have a number of objectives, the most basic of which is to provide a much needed primer for those students, scholars, and lawyers who are …

Policing Employment Contracts Within The Nexus-Of-Contracts Firm, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts On Poverty And Failure In The Market For Children's Human Capital, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Coase's Twin Towers: The Relation Between The Nature Of The Firm And The Problem Of Social Cost, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Ronald Coase's The Nature of the Firm (The Firm) may well be the second most cited article in law and economics. Usually, calling something second best is a backhanded compliment. But in this case the praise is sincere, for Coase also wrote the most cited article, The Problem of Social Cost (Social Cost). Much ink has been spilled over each article. Both are justly famous, and together they make Coase a richly deserving recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The Firm, published in 1937, is most often studied by corporate law or industrial organization …