Law Commons^™

The Penalties For Piracy: An Empirical Study Of National Prosecution Of International Crime, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

This Article examines the sentences imposed by courts around the world in prosecutions of Somali pirates captured on the high seas. Somali piracy has become perhaps the highest-volume area of international criminal law by national courts. As with other international crimes, international law is silent on the subject of penalties. The large number of parallel prosecutions of offenders from a single international "situation" offers an empirical window into the interactions between international and national law in municipal courts; into factors affecting punishment for international crimes and the hierarchy of international offenses; and of course into potential concerns with the current …

Law, Psychology & Morality, Kenworthey Bilz, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

In a democratic society, law is an important means to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. Demonstrating empirically that law can achieve moral goals is difficult. Nevertheless, public interest groups spend considerable energy and resources to change the law with the goal of changing not only morally-laden behaviors, but also morally-laden cognitions and emotions. Additionally, even when there is little reason to believe that a change in law will lead to changes in behavior or attitudes, groups see the law as a form of moral capital that they wish to own, to make a statement about society. Examples include gay …

Out To Lunch: Saks & Koehler Reply To Rudin & Imman's Commentary, Jonathan Koehler

Faculty Working Papers

At several points in their comment on our article in Science (1), Rudin & Inman (2, 3) asserted or clearly implied that we had been dishonest in our presentation. In each of those instances Rudin & Inman's charges are groundless, as we demonstrate below.

Had Rudin & Inman examined the actual source [see Fig. 1, right], they would have discovered that the words were indeed those of Moenssens, that they were consistent with the context in which they appeared, that Moenssens was not quoting Zain or anyone else, and that Saks & Koehler had accurately attributed the statement to its …