Law Commons^™

Rule By Data: The End Of Markets?, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores data as a source and, in their processed variant, as a means of governance that will likely replace both markets and the law. Discussing data not as an object of transactions or an object of governance, but as a tool for governing others on a scale that rivals that of nation states with their law, seems a fitting topic for a special issue that is devoted to the legal construction of markets. Here, I argue that while it may well be the case that law constitutes markets, markets are not the only way in which economic relations …

The Death Of The Firm, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

This Article maintains that the decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which referred to the corporation as a legal fiction designed to serve the interests of the people behind it, signals the “death of the firm” as a unit of legal analysis in which business entities are treated as more than the sum of their parts and appropriate partners to advance not just commercial, but public ends. The Hobby Lobby reference to the firm as a fiction is a product of a decades-long shift in the treatment of corporations. This shift reflects both an ideological embrace of the free-market-oriented “agency-cost” …

The Market As A Legal Concept, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

In the wake of the recent financial crisis of 2008, and in the run-up to what some are calling a perfect fiscal storm, there is no shortage of commentary on the need for fundamental market reform. Though there are certainly disagreements about where the real problems are and what to do, almost all the commentary remains wedded to an old and entirely false image of “free competition.” Of course, there is hardly consensus about whether markets require the heavy hand of regulative control, or are better left to regulate themselves, but a belief in the distinction between these two images …

Afterthoughts From A "Buzz Killer", Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Taking Coase Seriously: Neil Komesar On Law's Limits, Daniel H. Cole

Articles by Maurer Faculty

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, …

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 …

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 …

The Problem Of Transaction Costs, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Brilliant, The Curious, And The Wrong, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

An Appreciative Comment On Coase's The Problem Of Social Cost: A View From The Left, Pierre Schlag

Publications

Professor Coase's article, The Problem of Social Cost, played a significant role in launching the law and economics movement. Coase's insights have been used extensively by the law and economics movement as authority and inspiration for the development of an essentially right-leaning approach to law. In this Article, Professor Schlag undertakes to reexamine the original article. He shows that Coase's deconstructive moves opened up a series of volatile and radical inquiries. He then argues that the law and economics movement, in general, and Judge Posner, in particular, shut down the dangerous radicalism of these inquiries by hypostasizing Coase's insights …

The Politics Of The Coase Theorem And Its Relationship To Modern Legal Thought, Donald H. Gjerdingen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Coase Theorem And The Psychology Of Common-Law Thought, Donald H. Gjerdingen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The Coase Theorem is a simple proposition-in the absence of transaction costs, a Pareto optimal result will occur regardless of the initial placement of legal liability. Despite this apparent simplicity, however, Coase's economic parable has provoked intense debate in the legal community. Why does the theorem grate on the hardened intuitions of so many lawyers? The thesis of this Article is that a connection exists between the adoption or rejection of a given school of legal thought and the use of certain psychological constructs. Specifically, this Article argues that the constructs underlying the Coase Theorem are incompatible with those underlying …