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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Law
Presumptive Use Of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments, Christopher Slobogin
Presumptive Use Of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
One proposed reform of the pretrial detention system is the adoption of risk assessment instruments to assist courts in determining who is at risk of reoffending or a flight risk. This Response to Professor Melissa Hamilton's Article, Modelling Pretrial Detention, proposes that under most circumstances the results of well-validated instruments should not only inform pretrial outcomes but should dictate them, on the ground that such results are more likely to be accurate than judicial decision-making. The Response also provides evidence that this reform would significantly reduce pretrial detention rates and, consistent with Professor Hamilton's findings, avoid producing racially disparate results.
Preventive Justice: How Algorithms Parole Boards, And Limiting Retributivism Could End Mass Incarceration, Christopher Slobogin
Preventive Justice: How Algorithms Parole Boards, And Limiting Retributivism Could End Mass Incarceration, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A number of states use statistically derived algorithms to provide estimates of the risk of reoffending. In theory, these risk assessment instruments could bring significant benefits. Fewer people of all ethnicities would be put in jail prior to trial and in prison after conviction, the duration of sentences would be reduced for low-risk offenders, and treatment resources would be more efficiently allocated. As a result, the capital outlays for prisons and jails would be substantially reduced. The public would continue to be protected from the most dangerous individuals, while lower-risk individuals would be less subject to the criminogenic effects of …
Primer On Risk Assessment For Legal Decision-Makers, Christopher Slobogin
Primer On Risk Assessment For Legal Decision-Makers, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This primer is addressed to judges, parole board members, and other legal decisionmakers who use or are considering using the results of risk assessment instruments (RAIs) in making determinations about post-conviction dispositions, as well as to legislators and executive officials responsible for authorizing such use. It is meant to help these decisionmakers determine whether a particular RAI is an appropriate basis for legal determinations and whether evaluators who rely on an RAI have done so properly. This primer does not take a position on whether RAIs should be integrated into the criminal process. Rather, it provides legal decision-makers with information …
Principles Of Risk Assessment: Sentencing And Policing, Christopher Slobogin
Principles Of Risk Assessment: Sentencing And Policing, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Risk assessment — measuring an individual’s potential for offending — has long been an important aspect of criminal justice, especially in connection with sentencing, pretrial detention and police decision-making. To aid in the risk assessment inquiry, a number of states have recently begun relying on statistically-derived algorithms called “risk assessment instruments” (RAIs). RAIs are generally thought to be more accurate than the type of seat-of-the-pants risk assessment in which judges, parole boards and police officers have traditionally engaged. But RAIs bring with them their own set of controversies. In recognition of these concerns, this brief paper proposes three principles — …
Judicial Review Of Agency Benefit-Cost Analysis, W. Kip Viscusi, Caroline Cecof
Judicial Review Of Agency Benefit-Cost Analysis, W. Kip Viscusi, Caroline Cecof
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article evaluates judicial review of agency benefit-cost analysis ("BCA") by examining a substantial sample of thirty-eight judicial decisions on agency actions that implicate BCA. Essentially, the Administrative Procedure Act tasks federal courts with ensuring that federal agency action is reasonable. As more agencies use BCA to justify their rulemakings, the court's duty often requires judges to evaluate the reasonableness of agency BCAs. In this Article, we discuss the challenges that trigger judicial review of agency BCAs and the standards that govern the review. We then present specific examples of how courts analyze BCAs. Overall, we find many examples of …
Empirical Desert And Preventive Justice: A Comment, Christopher Slobogin
Empirical Desert And Preventive Justice: A Comment, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This essay is a response to an article by Paul Robinson, Joshua Barton, and Matthew Lister in this issue of New Criminal Law Review that criticizes an article I authored with Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein entitled Putting Desert in Its Place, which was itself an analysis of several works published by Robinson and various coauthors making the case for "empirical desert." Robinson's suggestion that utility can be optimized by a focus on desert as it is viewed by the average citizen opens up a new line of inquiry that could lead to a better appreciation of the influence desert should have on …
Prevention As The Primary Goal Of Sentencing: The Modern Case For Indeterminate Dispositions In Criminal Cases, Christopher Slobogin
Prevention As The Primary Goal Of Sentencing: The Modern Case For Indeterminate Dispositions In Criminal Cases, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Among modern-day legal academics determinate sentencing and limiting retributivism tend to be preferred over indeterminate sentencing, at least in part because the latter option is viewed as immoral. This Article contends to the contrary that, properly constituted, indeterminate sentencing is both a morally defensible method of preventing crime and the optimal regime for doing so. More specifically, the position defended in this Article is that, once a person is convicted of such an offense, the duration and nature of sentence should be based on a back-end decision made by experts in recidivism reduction, within very broad ranges set by the …
Discounting Dilemmas: Editors' Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Discounting Dilemmas: Editors' Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Two developments pose dilemmas for well established discounting techniques: (1) The extremely long time horizons associated with recently prominent environmental policy problems, such as climate change and nuclear waste storage, have made it important to take seriously both benefits to future generations and extreme uncertainties in projecting the returns to policies and future well being. (2) Findings in the burgeoning field of behavioral economics have made it clear that individuals routinely depart significantly from rational prescriptions when making choices over time, thus undermining a bulwark of the discounting approach. These two sets of dilemmas are addressed in a series of …
Natural Disaster Risks: An Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Natural Disaster Risks: An Introduction, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
An introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty dealing with the implications of catastrophic events for research on risk and uncertainty. What are the consequences of natural disasters? How do individuals and firms respond to such disasters? How do insurers respond, and how should the government respond? Several of these papers will have a strong normative component as they will suggest what actions individuals, firms, and the government should take in anticipation of natural disasters.
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …
Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi
Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A sample of almost 500 jury-eligible citizens considered a series of experimental situations involving accidents. The juror sample did not properly apply negligence rules, as their errors were particularly great for low-probability, large-loss cases. They also penalized corporations for undertaking corporate risk analyses that seek to trade off cost versus risk reduction benefits. Jurors' damages assessments were also more prone to error than were responses by a sample of state judges. Judges were less prone to erroneous risk beliefs and less subject to the zero-risk mentality.
Corporate Risk Analysis: A Reckless Act?, W. Kip Viscusi
Corporate Risk Analysis: A Reckless Act?, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Balancing of risk and cost lies at the heart of standard negligence tests and policy analysis approaches to government regulation. Notwithstanding the desirability of using a benefit-cost approach to assess the merits of safety measures, in many court cases juries appear to penalize corporations for having done a risk analysis in instances in which the company decided not to make a safety improvement after the analysis indicated the improvement was unwarranted Automobile accident cases provide the most prominent examples of such juror sanctions. This paper tests the effect of corporate risk analyses experimentally by using a sample of almost 500 …
Risk Equity, W. Kip Viscusi
Risk Equity, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Risk equity serves as the purported rationale for a wide range of inefficient policy practices, such as the concern that hypothetical individual risks not be too great. This paper proposes an alternative risk equity concept in terms of equitable tradeoffs rather than equity in risk levels. Equalizing the cost per life saved across policy contexts will save additional lives and will give fair treatment to risks arising in a variety of domains. Equitable tradeoffs will also benefit minorities who currently are disadvantaged by politically based inefficient policies.
Using Warnings To Extend The Boundaries Of Consumer Sovereignty, W. Kip Viscusi
Using Warnings To Extend The Boundaries Of Consumer Sovereignty, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
We make decisions every day for which we may not have full information. Not all such decisions lead to negative consequences, however. For example, scientists still know very little about why aspirin has its beneficial effects. However, the lack of our knowledge does not necessarily imply that our decisions are in error or that our freedom to make these decisions should be constrained. Almost invariably, we must make decisions with uncertain implications when we fail to have complete information, whether it be with respect to today's weather forecast or the chemical composition of the foods we eat, but this does …
Estimation Of Revealed Probabilities And Utility Functions For Product Safety Decisions, W. Kip Viscusi, William N. Evans
Estimation Of Revealed Probabilities And Utility Functions For Product Safety Decisions, W. Kip Viscusi, William N. Evans
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Using survey data on consumer product purchases, this paper introduces an approach to estimate jointly individual utility functions and risk perceptions implied by their decisions. The behavioral risk beliefs reflected in consumers risky decisions differ from the stated probabilities given to them in the survey. These results are not consistent with a Bayesian learning model in which the information respondents utilize is restricted to what the survey presents. The results are, however, potentially consistent with models in which prior risk information is influential or models in which people do not act in a fully rational manner.
Economic Foundations Of The Current Regulatory Reform Efforts, W. Kip Viscusi
Economic Foundations Of The Current Regulatory Reform Efforts, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Almost since the inception of the risk and environmental agencies in the early 1970s, there has been a continuing concern with ensuring that regulations yield societal benefits commensurate with their costs. This recognition of the need for balance, in turn, has led policymakers to seek a greater role for economists, and the principles of economic analysis undoubtedly will continue to play a central role in the debate over the future of regulatory policy.
Carcinogen Regulation: Risk Characteristics And The Synthetic Risk Bias, W. Kip Viscusi
Carcinogen Regulation: Risk Characteristics And The Synthetic Risk Bias, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In this paper, I will explore the decision to regulate natural and synthetic chemicals. To what extent are regulatory decisions driven by the severity of the risk as opposed to the character of the risk exposure? The striking result is that the risk severity plays a very small role. Instead.it is whether the chemical is synthetic or natural that is the driving force behind regulatory decisions.
Risk Perceptions In Regulation, Tort Liability, And The Market, W. Kip Viscusi
Risk Perceptions In Regulation, Tort Liability, And The Market, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Risk regulations are generally based on a stylized view of the behavior of the individuals affected by the regulation. These behavioral assumptions establish the basis for regulation and also influence the character of the regulation that will be pursed. The mix of behavioral assumptions that provides the basis for policy is often inconsistent. In some cases policymakers assume that irrationality prevails if that assumption will promote government intervention. If, however, individual perception of the risk and response to it is required to make a policy effective, risk regulators do not recognize individuals' cognitive limitations. These stylized views of risk-taking behavior …
Wading Through The Muddle Of Risk-Utility Analysis, W. Kip Viscusi
Wading Through The Muddle Of Risk-Utility Analysis, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The original emphasis of risk-utility analysis on the need for balanced decisions with respect to product liability is a correct and fundamental principle. Moreover, many traditional factors that have been considered are legitimate, but they did not provide a framework for comprehensive and consistent risk-utility judgments. The development in this Article of a series of economic formulations of the risk-utility test is intended to establish a sounder basis for a products liability defect doctrine.
The Rutabaga That Ate Pittsburgh: Federal Regulation Of Free Release Biotechnology, Michael P. Vandenbergh
The Rutabaga That Ate Pittsburgh: Federal Regulation Of Free Release Biotechnology, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first approved a field test of a bioengineered microbe,' one EPA official remarked: "We're not expecting this to be the rutabaga that eats Pittsburgh.' 2 But regulators cannot afford to be wrong. Bioengineered microbes may serve many useful purposes, but they may also cause harm to the environment and to human health.3 Although the risks of an accident stemming from the deliberate release of bioengineered microbes into the environment may be low, the resulting damage could be substantial. This note examines the possible consequences of two recent trends in biotechnology-the development of bioengineered microbes …
Adaptive Responses To Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers?, W. Kip Viscusi, Charles J. O'Conner
Adaptive Responses To Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers?, W. Kip Viscusi, Charles J. O'Conner
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A fundamental issue in the economics of uncertainty is how individuals process information and make choices under uncertainty. In a recent analysis of the findings on risk perception, Kenneth Arrow (1982) concluded that the evidence regarding individual rationality was, at best, quite mixed. A prominent example of apparent irrationality of actual consumer behavior is that consumers, who presumably are risk averse, have failed to purchase heavily subsidized federal flood insurance. In the case of the market for hazardous jobs, which is the focus of this study, Viscusi (1979) found that workers' risk perceptions were positively correlated with the industry risk …
Wealth Effects And Earnings Premiums For Job Hazards, W. Kip Viscusi
Wealth Effects And Earnings Premiums For Job Hazards, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
DAM Smith (1937) observed that "the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labor and stock must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality." If a job poses health and safety risks that are especially great, a worker will require higher levels of compensation or greater non-pecuniary benefits in order for him to accept the risky job. Despite the fact that the theory of compensating differentials is almost two centuries old, it has been only recently that this theory has been subjected to successful empirical tests. The purposes of this …