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Full-Text Articles in Law
Valuing Black And Female Lives: A Proposal For Incorporating Agency Vsl Into Tort Damages, Catherine M. Sharkey
Valuing Black And Female Lives: A Proposal For Incorporating Agency Vsl Into Tort Damages, Catherine M. Sharkey
Notre Dame Law Review
Federal agencies adopt a uniform VSL (value of statistical life)—one that does not vary according to demographic characteristics—in conducting cost-benefit analyses in connection with regulatory policy decisions. In sharp juxtaposition, the use of race- and gender-based statistics on wages and work-life expectancy in calculating tort wrongful death damage awards is an entrenched practice among forensic economists who serve as expert witnesses in tort litigation. The conventional use of race- and gender-specific economic data concerning wages and work-life expectancy in calculating tort damages leads to unjustifiable disparities in awards for blacks and women. Young female and minority tort victims bear the …
Efficient Ethical Principles For Making Fatal Choices, W. Kip Viscusi
Efficient Ethical Principles For Making Fatal Choices, W. Kip Viscusi
Notre Dame Law Review
Resource allocations of all kinds inevitably encounter financial constraints, making it infeasible to make financially unbounded commitments. Such resource constraints arise in almost all health and safety risk contexts, which has led to a regulatory oversight process to ascertain whether the expected benefits of major regulations outweigh the costs. The economic approach to monetizing health and safety risks is well established and is based on the value of a statistical life (“VSL”). Government agencies use these values reflecting attitudes toward small changes in risk to monetize the largest benefit component of regulations—that dealing with mortality risks. This procedure consequently bases …