Law Commons^™

Capital's Offense: Law's Entrenchment Of Inequality, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014)

Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a rare scholarly achievement. It weaves together description and prescription, facts and values, economics, politics, and history, with an assured and graceful touch. So clear is Piketty’s reasoning, and so compelling the enormous data apparatus he brings to bear, that few can doubt he has fundamentally altered our appreciation of the scope, duration, and intensity of inequality. This review explains Piketty’s analysis and its relevance to law and social theory, drawing lessons for the re-emerging field of political economy.

The university …

Bargaining Without Law, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

Like a professional athlete on growth hormones, legal bargaining scholarship has transformed itself over the years. Once an amateurish assortment of war stories and folk tales, now it is a hulking behemoth of social science surveys and studies. There is a lot to like in this transformation. Much of the new writing is insightful, sophisticated, and spirited, with things to tell even the most experienced bargainer. But it also is missing something important: law. Bargaining scholars now routinely write about dispute settlement as if the strength of the parties’ competing legal claims is of no consequence. Rarely do they discuss …