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University of Michigan Law School

Efficiency

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Designing Legal Experiences, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott Feb 2021

Designing Legal Experiences, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott

Book Chapters

Technological advancements are improving how courts operate by changing the way they handle proceedings and interact with litigants. Court Innovations is a socially minded software startup that enables citizens, law enforcement, and courts to resolve legal matters through Matterhorn, an online communication and dispute resolution platform. Matterhorn was conceived at the University of Michigan Law School and successfully piloted in two Michigan district courts beginning in 2014. The platform now operates in over 40 courts and in at least eight states, and it has facilitated the resolution of more than 40,000 cases to date. These numbers will continue to grow …


Will The "Legal Singularity" Hollow Out Law's Normative Core?, Robert F. Weber Jan 2021

Will The "Legal Singularity" Hollow Out Law's Normative Core?, Robert F. Weber

Michigan Technology Law Review

This Article undertakes a critical examination of the unintended consequences for the legal system if we arrive at the futurist dream of a legal singularity—the moment when predictive, mass-data technologies evolve to create a perfectly predictable, algorithmically-expressed legal system bereft of all legal uncertainty. It argues that although the singularity would surely enhance the efficiency of the legal system in a narrow sense, it would also undermine the rule of law, a bedrock institution of any liberal legal order and a key source of the legal system’s legitimacy. It would do so by dissolving the normative content of the two …


Property, Unbundled Water Entitlements, And Anticommons Tragedies: A Cautionary Tale From Australia, Paul Babie, Paul Leadbeter, Kyriaco Nikias Mar 2020

Property, Unbundled Water Entitlements, And Anticommons Tragedies: A Cautionary Tale From Australia, Paul Babie, Paul Leadbeter, Kyriaco Nikias

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

As water becomes an increasingly scarce resource, a lack of clarity in relation to its use can produce both conflict among and inefficient use by users. In order to encourage markets in water and to ensure the viability and functionality of those markets, governments in many jurisdictions have moved away from commons property as a means of water allocation, and towards systems of private property in water. In doing so, one policy and legal option is “unbundling”, which seeks carefully to define both the entitlement to water and its separation into constituent parts. Advocates claim that unbundling makes water rights …


Platform Procedure: Using Technology To Facilitate (Efficient) Civil Settlement., J.J. Prescott, Alexander Sanchez Jan 2019

Platform Procedure: Using Technology To Facilitate (Efficient) Civil Settlement., J.J. Prescott, Alexander Sanchez

Book Chapters

In this chapter, we explore the ability of courts to enhance the role of substantive law in case outcomes by reducing party litigation costs. When it becomes less costly for parties to engage actively in dispute resolution, the shadow of substantive law should, in theory, become more pronounced and case outcomes should change (and hopefully become more accurate/efficient on average). To empirically investigate this hypothesis, we examine the consequences of a large state court’s implementation of court-assisted online dispute resolution (ODR) tools for its small claims docket. A central goal of this technology is to reduce litigation costs of all …


Moral Diversity And Efficient Breach, Matthew A. Seligman Jan 2019

Moral Diversity And Efficient Breach, Matthew A. Seligman

Michigan Law Review

Most people think it is morally wrong to breach a contract. But sophisticated commercial parties, like large corporations, have no objection to breaching contracts and paying the price in damages when doing so is in their self-interest. The literature has ignored the profound legal, economic, and normative implications of that asymmetry between individuals’ and firms’ approaches to breach. To individuals, a contract is a promise that cannot be broken regardless of the financial stakes. For example, millions of homeowners refused to breach their mortgage contracts in the aftermath of the housing crisis even though doing so could have saved them …


Regulating Black-Box Medicine, W. Nicholson Price Ii Dec 2017

Regulating Black-Box Medicine, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Michigan Law Review

Data drive modern medicine. And our tools to analyze those data are growing ever more powerful. As health data are collected in greater and greater amounts, sophisticated algorithms based on those data can drive medical innovation, improve the process of care, and increase efficiency. Those algorithms, however, vary widely in quality. Some are accurate and powerful, while others may be riddled with errors or based on faulty science. When an opaque algorithm recommends an insulin dose to a diabetic patient, how do we know that dose is correct? Patients, providers, and insurers face substantial difficulties in identifying high-quality algorithms; they …


Implementing High Frequency Trading Regulation: A Critical Analysis Of Current Reforms, Michael Morelli Apr 2017

Implementing High Frequency Trading Regulation: A Critical Analysis Of Current Reforms, Michael Morelli

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Technological developments in securities markets, most notably high frequency trading, have fundamentally changed the structure and nature of trading over the past fifty years. Policymakers, both domestically and abroad, now face many new challenges influencing the secondary market’s effectiveness as a generator of economic growth and stability. Faced with these rapid structural changes, many are quick to denounce high frequency trading as opportunistic and parasitic. This article, however, instead argues that while high frequency trading presents certain general risks to secondary market efficiency, liquidity, stability, and integrity, the practice encompasses a wide variety of strategies, many of which can enhance, …


Complexity's Shadow: American Indian Property, Sovereignty, And The Future, Jessica A. Shoemaker Feb 2017

Complexity's Shadow: American Indian Property, Sovereignty, And The Future, Jessica A. Shoemaker

Michigan Law Review

This Article offers a new perspective on the challenges of the modern American Indian land tenure system. While some property theorists have renewed focus on isolated aspects of Indian land tenure, including the historic inequities of colonial takings of Indian lands, this Article argues that the complexity of today’s federally imposed reservation property system does much of the same colonizing work that historic Indian land policies—from allotment to removal to termination—did overtly. But now, these inequities are largely overshadowed by the daunting complexity of the whole land tenure structure. This Article introduces a new taxonomy of complexity in American Indian …


Economic Solutions To Nuclear Energy's Financial Challenges, Zachary Robock May 2016

Economic Solutions To Nuclear Energy's Financial Challenges, Zachary Robock

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Note presents a legal, economic, and regulatory roadmap to drive long-term innovation in sustainable energy generation. Next-generation nuclear power, which fundamentally mitigates many safety and nuclear waste issues, is the focus of this Note; however, the economic concepts can be applied to encourage solar, wind, advanced battery, and other sustainable technologies with high upfront costs and low long-term variable costs. Advanced nuclear energy generation is economically competitive on a long-term levelized cost basis, but suffers from a timing issue—a large amount of capital is needed upfront, with repayment over several decades, during which time significant capital costs can accrue …


Where Kafka Reigns: A Call For Metamorphosis In Unlawful Detainer Law, John Campbell Apr 2016

Where Kafka Reigns: A Call For Metamorphosis In Unlawful Detainer Law, John Campbell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This story reflects a new reality in which nonjudicial foreclosure, combined with draconian unlawful detainer laws, concretizes the injuries associated with wrongful foreclosure, degrades the perceived legitimacy of the courts, and suppresses valid claims of wrongful foreclosure. Indeed, this very scenario happens regularly in a variety of states. This story is a very real tale of how homeowners are harmed by a foreclosure process that has largely escaped scholarly review. Rooted in the belief that sunshine is a powerful disinfectant, this Article aims to shed light on states that hogtie homeowners and makes a normative argument that such a process …


Forcing Patent Claims, Tun-Jen Chiang Feb 2015

Forcing Patent Claims, Tun-Jen Chiang

Michigan Law Review

An enormous literature has criticized patent claims for being ambiguous. In this Article, I explain that this literature misunderstands the real problem: the fundamental concern is not that patent claims are ambiguous but that they are drafted by patentees with self-serving incentives to write claims in an overbroad manner. No one has asked why the patent system gives self-interested patentees the leading role in delineating the scope of their own patents. This Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, it explicitly frames the problem with patent claims as one of patentee self-interest rather than the intrinsic ambiguity of claim …


Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis Nov 2014

Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis

Articles

In 1950, 91 % of common stock in the U.S. was owned directly by individual inves­ tors. Today, that percentage stands at only 23%. The mass exodus of retail investors and their investment dollars has negative implications not only for capital formation and investor protection, but also for market efficiency. Individual investors are often assumed to be noise traders who distort stock prices and harm market functioning. Therefore, some argue that their withdrawal from the market should be of little concern; indeed, it should be celebrated. Recent empirical evidence calls this assertion of retail noise trading into doubt, and this …


Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel Mar 2014

Experiments In International Criminal Justice: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, John D. Ciorciari, Anne Heindel

Michigan Journal of International Law

Important experiments in international criminal justice have been taking place at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Court), a tribunal created by the United Nations and Cambodian Government to adjudicate some of the most egregious crimes of the Pol Pot era.2 The tribunal opened its doors in 2006, and although its work continues, its first seven years of operations provide an opportunity to evaluate its performance and judge the extent to which legal and institutional experiments at the ECCC have been successful to date. This Article will show that, in general, the ECCC’s most unique and …


Comparative Effectiveness Research As Choice Architecture: The Behavioral Law And Economics Solution To The Health Care Cost Crisis, Russell Korobkin Feb 2014

Comparative Effectiveness Research As Choice Architecture: The Behavioral Law And Economics Solution To The Health Care Cost Crisis, Russell Korobkin

Michigan Law Review

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) set to dramatically increase access to medical care, the problem of rising costs will move center stage in health law and policy discussions. “Consumer directed health care” proposals, which provide patients with financial incentives to equate marginal costs and benefits of care at the point of treatment, demand more decisionmaking ability from consumers than is plausible due to bounded rationality. Proposals that seek to change the incentives of health care providers threaten to create conflicts of interest between doctors and patients. New approaches are desperately needed. This Article proposes a government-facilitated …


Holding Up And Holding Out, Colleen V. Chien Jan 2014

Holding Up And Holding Out, Colleen V. Chien

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it is most vulnerable—after it has implemented a technology—and is able wrest a settlement because it is too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises, and the ex ante assertion of technology patents whether in the smartphone war, standards, or patent “troll” context. …


Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz Jan 2014

Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on the differences in their risk profiles, first, so that different premiums can be charged to the different groups based on their differing risks and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are limits, however, to the types of discrimination that are permissible for insurers. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article (a) articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting …


Towards A Universal Framework For Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz Jan 2014

Towards A Universal Framework For Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

Discrimination in insurance is principally regulated at the state level. Surprisingly, there is a great deal of variation across coverage lines and policyholder characteristics in how and the extent to which risk classification by insurers is limited. Some statutes expressly permit insurers to consider certain characteristics, while other characteristics are forbidden or limited in various ways. What explains this variation across coverage lines and policyholder characteristics? Drawing on a unique, hand-collected data-set consisting of the laws regulating insurer risk classification in fifty-one U.S. jurisdictions, this Article argues that much of the variation in state-level regulation of risk classification can in …


Private Copyright Reform, Kristelia A. García Dec 2013

Private Copyright Reform, Kristelia A. García

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The government is not the only player in copyright reform, and perhaps not even the most important. Left to free market negotiation, risk averse licensors and licensees are contracting around the statutory license for certain types of copyright-protected content, and achieving greater efficiency via private ordering. This emerging phenomenon, herein termed “private copyright reform,” presents both adverse selection and distributive justice concerns: first, circumvention of the statutory license goes against legislative intent by allowing for the reduction, and even elimination, of statutorily mandated royalties owed to non-parties. In addition, when presented without full term disclosure, privately determined royalty rates can …


Why International Catch Shares Won't Save Ocean Biodiversity, Holly Doremus Apr 2013

Why International Catch Shares Won't Save Ocean Biodiversity, Holly Doremus

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Skepticism about the efficacy and efficiency of regulatory approaches has produced a wave of enthusiasm for market-based strategies for dealing with environmental conflicts. In the fisheries context, the most prominent of these strategies is the use of “catch shares,” which assign specific proportions of the total allowable catch to individuals who are then free to trade them with others. Catch shares are now in wide use domestically within many nations, and there are increasing calls for implementation of internationally tradable catch shares. Based on a review of theory, empirical evidence, and two contexts in which catch shares have been proposed, …


Recent Changes In U.S. And U.K. Overseas Anti-Corruption Enforcement Under The Fcpa And The U.K. Bribery Law: Private Equity Compliance, Isaac A. Binkovitz Jan 2013

Recent Changes In U.S. And U.K. Overseas Anti-Corruption Enforcement Under The Fcpa And The U.K. Bribery Law: Private Equity Compliance, Isaac A. Binkovitz

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The following discussion provides a preliminary guide for those tasked with steering private equity firms through the shifting obstacle course of overseas anti-corruption compliance. Section I briefly reviews the centrality of overseas anti-corruption enforcement and its role in creating a more hospitable business climate in emerging markets. Section I also examines the American and British enforcement regimes in general before analyzing the most recent changes–specifically, changes as to the scope of liability and expansion of their jurisdiction. This section is designed to help determine whether investments or acquisitions fall within the purview of either enforcement regime. Section II discusses various …


Review Of Corrective Justice, By E. Weinrib, Scott Hershovitz Jan 2013

Review Of Corrective Justice, By E. Weinrib, Scott Hershovitz

Reviews

I once heard it said of a famous philosopher of law that he never allowed his philosophy to be polluted by law. No one will ever say that about Ernie Weinrib. His latest book - Corrective Justice - is exceptional precisely because Weinrib is deeply informed about legal doctrine. Of course, he also has formidable philosophical skill, and in bringing that to bear on doctrine, he dismantles any thought that corrective justice is too abstract a concept to shed light on the practical problems that courts face. Along the way, he also demol­ ishes the instrumentalism that has recently dominated …


The President's Enforcement Power, Kate Andrias Jan 2013

The President's Enforcement Power, Kate Andrias

Articles

Enforcement of law is at the core of the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care” that the laws are faithfully executed, and it is a primary mechanism for effecting national regulatory policy. Yet questions about how presidents oversee agency enforcement activity have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This Article provides a positive account of the President’s role in administrative enforcement, explores why presidential enforcement has taken the shape it has, and examines the bounds of the President’s enforcement power. It demonstrates that presidential involvement in agency enforcement, though extensive, has been ad hoc, crisis-driven, and frequently opaque. The Article thus …


Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand Jan 2013

Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand

Articles

Like firms in the United States, many Canadian firms voluntarily restrict trading by corporate insiders beyond the requirements of insider trading laws (i.e., super-compliance). Thus, we aim to understand the determinants of firms’ private insider trading policies (ITPs), which are quasi-contractual devices. Based on the assumption that firms that face greater costs from insider trading (or greater benefits from restricting insider trading) ought to be more inclined than other firms to adopt more stringent ITPs, we develop several testable hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of firms included in the Toronto Stock Exchange/Standard and Poor’s (TSX/S&P) …


A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee Oct 2012

A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee

Michigan Law Review

This Article provides a financial economic theory of punitive damages. The core problem, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, is not the systemic amount of punitive damages in the tort system; rather it is the risk of outlier outcomes. Low frequency, high severity awards are unpredictable, cause financial distress, and beget social cost. By focusing only on offsetting escaped liability, the standard law and economics theory fails to account for the core problem of variance. This Article provides a risk arbitrage analysis of the relationship between variance, litigation valuation, and optimal deterrence. Starting with settlement …


Race, Markets, And Hollywood's Perpetual Antitrust Dilemma, Hosea H. Harvey Sep 2012

Race, Markets, And Hollywood's Perpetual Antitrust Dilemma, Hosea H. Harvey

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article focuses on the oft-neglected intersection of racially skewed outcomes and anti-competitive markets. Through historical, contextual, and empirical analysis, the Article describes the state of Hollywood motion-picture distribution from its anticompetitive beginnings through the industry's role in creating an anti-competitive, racially divided market at the end of the last century. The Article's evidence suggests that race-based inefficiencies have plagued the film distribution process and such inefficiencies might likely be caused by the anti-competitive structure of the market itself, and not merely by overt or intentional racial-discrimination. After explaining why traditional anti-discrimination laws are ineffective remedies for such inefficiencies, the …


What The Return Of The Administrative Conference Of The United States Means For Administrative Law, Paul R. Verkuil Jan 2012

What The Return Of The Administrative Conference Of The United States Means For Administrative Law, Paul R. Verkuil

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Administrative law, writ large, is about the way agencies behave, and how other institutions and the public react to that behavior. By promulgating rules, adjudicating cases and claims, enforcing statutes, providing guidance, collaborating with interest groups, exercising discretion, and so forth, agencies manage and implement the business of government.1 They do this under the auspices of the Executive Branch, but the other branches assert authority over the agencies as well. Congress does so by legislating, budgeting, and overseeing, while the courts do so by interpreting statutes and requiring rational behavior from agencies. These important and essential activities fill many law …


Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus Jan 2012

Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.


Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2012

Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Initial public offerings (IPOs)-the first sale of private firms' stock to the public-are a bellwether of investor sentiment. Investors must be bullish if they are putting their money into untested start-ups. IPOs are frequently cited in the business press as a key barometer of the health of financial markets. Politicians, too, see a steady flow of IPOs as an indicator that capital is fueling the entrepreneurial initiative that sustains the growth of new businesses. Growing businesses create jobs, so Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on the importance of promoting IPOs. That bipartisan consensus was on display this spring …


Rethinking Merger Efficiencies, Daniel A. Crane Dec 2011

Rethinking Merger Efficiencies, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The two leading merger systems-those of the United States and the European Union-treat the potential benefits and risks of mergers asymmetrically. Both systems require considerably greater proof of efficiencies than they do of potential harms if the efficiencies are to offset concerns over the accumulation or exercise of market power The implicit asymmetry principle has important systemic effects for merger control. It not only stands in the way of some socially desirable mergers but also may indirectly facilitate the clearance of some socially undesirable mergers. Neither system explicitly justifies this asymmetry, and none of the plausible justifications are normatively supportable. …


Efficient Breach Of International Law: Optimal Remedies, 'Legalized Noncompliance,' And Related Issues, Eric A. Posner, Alan O. Sykes Nov 2011

Efficient Breach Of International Law: Optimal Remedies, 'Legalized Noncompliance,' And Related Issues, Eric A. Posner, Alan O. Sykes

Michigan Law Review

In much of the scholarly literature on international law, there is a tendency to condemn violations of the law and to leave it at that. If all violations of international law were indeed undesirable, this tendency would be unobjectionable. We argue in this Article, however that a variety of circumstances arise under which violations of international law are desirable from an economic standpoint. The reasons why are much the same as the reasons why nonperformance of private contracts is sometimes desirable- the concept of "efficient breach," familiar to modern students of contract law, has direct applicability to international law. As …