Law Commons^™

Settlers And Immigrants In The Formation Of American Law, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper argues that the early American republic is best understood as a constitutional experiment in “settler empire,” and that related migration policies played a central role in shaping collective identity and structures of authority. Initial colonists, along with their 19th century descendants, viewed society as grounded in an ideal of freedom that emphasized continuous popular mobilization and direct economic and political decision-making. However, many settlers believed that this ideal required Indian dispossession and the coercive use of dependent groups, most prominently slaves, in order to ensure that they themselves had access to property and did not have to engage …

Synecdoche, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article suggests that the ideas of synecdoche and metonymy are not just figures of speech in which the part stands in for the whole. They are potentially useful metaphoric devices to understand the politics of institutional change through the inclusion of the formerly excluded.

Capture: here the hazard is that those who find themselves in a position to use institutional power may find themselves subject to pressure to conform to the norms and values of those who have traditionally benefitted from the conventional use of that institution's authority. This will often be subtle and it may merely be a …

The Psychological Foundations Of Behavioral Law And Economics, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Over the past decade, psychological research has enjoyed a rapidly expanding influence on legal scholarship. This expansion has established a new field—“Behavioral Law and Economics” (BLE). BLE’s principal insight is that human behavior commonly deviates from the predictions of rational choice theory in the marketplace, the election booth, and the courtroom. Because these deviations are predictable, and often harmful, legal rules can be crafted to reduce their undesirable influence. Ironically, BLE seldom recognizes that its intellectual origins lie with psychology more so than economics. This failure leaves BLE open to criticisms that can be answered only by embracing the underlying …

Responses To The Ten Questions, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay responds to a question posed by the William Mitchell Law Review for its annual national security issue: Has Obama Improved Bush's National Security Policies? I maintain that Obama Administration practices have been marked by striking continuities with those of the previous Administration. I then attempt to explain these continuities by discussing how American policymakers across the political spectrum share basic assumptions about the concept of national security and the need for an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy.