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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judges And Judgment: In Praise Of Instigators, Kathryn Judge
Judges And Judgment: In Praise Of Instigators, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay is about mutual funds. Because of that, it may put many to sleep long before we get to the heart of the matter. I encourage you right now to stay awake, or at least keep one eye propped open. For embedded in this story about mutual funds, rent seeking, the challenge of separating the good and the bad, and the even greater challenge of respecting autonomy in an environment where so many choices seem to be bad ones, is the story of a judge. That judge is the Honorable Richard A. Posner, aka RAP, Dick, Professor Posner, the …
Big Data And Discrimination, Talia B. Gillis, Jan L. Speiss
Big Data And Discrimination, Talia B. Gillis, Jan L. Speiss
Faculty Scholarship
The ability to distinguish between people in setting the price of credit is often constrained by legal rules that aim to prevent discrimination. These legal requirements have developed focusing on human decision-making contexts, and so their effectiveness is challenged as pricing increasingly relies on intelligent algorithms that extract information from big data. In this Essay, we bring together existing legal requirements with the structure of machine-learning decision-making in order to identify tensions between old law and new methods and lay the ground for legal solutions. We argue that, while automated pricing rules provide increased transparency, their complexity also limits the …
On Posner On Copyright, Tim Wu
On Posner On Copyright, Tim Wu
Faculty Scholarship
The judiciary are different than you and me, not just because they have life tenure, but because they spend years being petitioned by real people. A judge therefore does not face problems as a logistician or an academic does but instead faces a demand to do something for someone, based on events preceding. The resulting posture of decision tends to bring something out, something Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once described as “the secret root from which the law draws all the juices of life.”
We can learn more about this “secret root” of the common law decision-making from Richard Posner’s …