Law Commons^™

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

Del Derecho Y La Economía Al Derecho Económico. Working Paper N. 1, Mario A. Pinzón Mapc

Mario A Pinzón Camargo

La relación entre derecho y economía se ha condensado en un nuevo espacio de reflexión que puede ser denominado como un nuevo paradigma en las ciencias sociales. A diferencia de la concepción clásica que plantea el antagonismo entre estas dos, éste artículo examina su complementariedad. The link between law and economics has been condensed in a new space of reflection that can be called a new paradigm within the social sciences, which intends to build the bridges of understanding between these two sciences. In contrast to the classical conception that states the antagonism in between them, due to their constitutive …

Puntos De Encuentro Y Apoyo De La Nueva Economía Institucional En El Análisis De Las Políticas Públicas. Working Paper N. 2, Mario A. Pinzón Mapc

Mario A Pinzón Camargo

Este artículo tiene como propósito analizar el grado de utilidad de una de las vertientes del Análisis Económico del Derecho, la Nueva Economía Institucional, en el Análisis de Políticas Públicas.

Relational Contract Theory And Management Contracts: A Paradigm For The Application Of The Theory Of The Norms, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

This paper examines management contracts as a paradigm for the application of relational contracts theory and especially of the theory of contractual and relational norms. This theory, deriving from Macauley's implications, but structured and analysed by I.R. MacNeil gives us a framework for the explanation and understanding of contractual obligations and business relations' rules and practice. After presenting the key literature about the norms theory and especially defining the content of MacNeil's norms, we define management contracts as relations, characterised by a high relational element and we explain why, investigating all their features, which make them a suitable object for …

Wobbling Back To The Fire: Economic Efficiency And The Creation Of A Retail Market For Set-Top Boxes, T. Randolph Beard, George S. Ford, Lawrence J. Spiwak, Michael Stern

GEORGE S FORD

Under Section 629 of the Communications Act, Congress directed the FCC to adopt regulations to promote a retail market for set-top boxes. The Commission’s first attempt was the ill-fated CableCard experiment, which—by the Commission’s own admission—was a dismal failure. In response, the Commission is now contemplating an aggressive new “AllVid” regime, whereby the agency would mandate multichannel video program distributors (“MVPDs”) to provide an adapter to serve as a “common interface for connection to televisions, DVRs, and other smart video devices.” Because the FCC is again proceeding without any formal economic analysis of the nature of the service-equipment relationship in …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …