Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 53

Full-Text Articles in Law

How Do We Get Along? International Economic Law And The Nation-State, Gregory Shaffer Jan 2019

How Do We Get Along? International Economic Law And The Nation-State, Gregory Shaffer

Michigan Law Review

Review of Dani Rodrik's Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy.


Be Careful What You Wish For? Reducing Inequality In The Twenty-First Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Orli K. Avi-Yonah Apr 2018

Be Careful What You Wish For? Reducing Inequality In The Twenty-First Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Orli K. Avi-Yonah

Michigan Law Review

A review of Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.


Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn Nov 2017

Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Environmental controls in the United States are often said to be “technology-based” because the polluter’s duties are determined by the available technology for controlling that pollution rather than by the social costs and benefits of doing so. Indeed, this is much of what distinguishes U.S. environmental law post-1970 from that which preceded it. But technology-based standards have in fact weighed the costs of controlling pollution in unique, often obscure ways, yielding an analysis that defies standardization and basic notions of transparency. Often lumped under an umbrella heading called “feasibility” analysis and justified on the grounds that it avoids many of …


Are People Probabilistically Challenged?, Alex Stein Apr 2013

Are People Probabilistically Challenged?, Alex Stein

Michigan Law Review

Daniel Kahneman's recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, is a must-read for any scholar or policymaker interested in behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is a young, but already well-established, discipline that pervasively affects law and legal theory. Kahneman, a 2002 Nobel Laureate, is the discipline's founding father. His pioneering work with Amos Tversky and others challenges the core economic concept of expected utility, which serves to determine the value of people's prospects. Under mainstream economic theory, the value of a person's prospect equals the prospect's utility upon materialization (U) multiplied by the probability of the prospect materializing (P). When the prospect …


The Dog That Didn't Bark: Private Investment Funds And Relational Contracts In The Wake Of The Great Recession, Robert C. Illig Jan 2012

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Private Investment Funds And Relational Contracts In The Wake Of The Great Recession, Robert C. Illig

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

In the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis, the contract rights of numerous hedge funds and venture capital funds were breached. These contracts were complex and sophisticated and had been negotiated at great time and expense. Yet despite all of the assumptions of neo-classical contracts theory, nothing happened. Practically none of these injured parties sued to enforce their rights. Professor Illig uses this dearth of litigation to conduct a form of natural experiment as to the value of contract law. Discrete market participants contracted before the crash and then pursued their rights in court afterwards, while relational market participants contracted …


Plus Factors And Agreement In Antitrust Law, William E. Kovacic, Robert C. Marshall, Leslie M. Marx, Halbert L. White Dec 2011

Plus Factors And Agreement In Antitrust Law, William E. Kovacic, Robert C. Marshall, Leslie M. Marx, Halbert L. White

Michigan Law Review

Plus factors are economic actions and outcomes, above and beyond parallel conduct by oligopolistic firms, that are largely inconsistent with unilateral conduct but largely consistent with explicitly coordinated action. Possible plus factors are typically enumerated without any attempt to distinguish them in terms of a meaningful economic categorization or in terms of their probative strength for inferring collusion. In this Article, we provide a taxonomy for plus factors as well as a methodology for ranking plus factors in terms of their strength for inferring explicit collusion, the strongest of which are referred to as "super plus factors."


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 …


Explaining The Importance Of Public Choice For Law, D. Daniel Sokol Apr 2011

Explaining The Importance Of Public Choice For Law, D. Daniel Sokol

Michigan Law Review

The next generation of government officials, business leaders, and members of civil society likely will draw from the current pool of law school students. These students often lack a foundation of the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to understand law's interplay with government. This highlights the importance of public choice analysis. By framing issues through a public choice lens, these students will learn the dynamics of effective decision making within various institutional settings. Filling the void of how to explain the decision-making process of institutional actors in legal settings is Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law by Maxwell Steams …


Transparency: An Analysis Of An Evolving Fundamental Principle In International Economic Law, Carl-Sebastian Zoellner Jan 2006

Transparency: An Analysis Of An Evolving Fundamental Principle In International Economic Law, Carl-Sebastian Zoellner

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will first sketch the theoretical underpinnings of transparency in an interdisciplinary overview of its possible meanings and advantages in the present context. It will then survey documents and instruments of international economic law in which language embracing the transparency principle is already present. The Note's main section proceeds to ask whether, in the actual application of those agreements, the transparency principle has had any notable impact on the interpretation of state obligations. Finally, in addressing transparency's future role in international economic law, this Note briefly discusses additional problems which might be resolved through a transparency-based approach.


The Next Generation: Milhaupt And West On Japanese Economic Law, Kent Anderson Jan 2006

The Next Generation: Milhaupt And West On Japanese Economic Law, Kent Anderson

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Economic Organizations and Corporate Governance in Japan: The Impact of Formal and Informal Rules by Curtis Milhaupt & Mark West


Supporting Sustained Economic Development, Steven Radelet Jan 2005

Supporting Sustained Economic Development, Steven Radelet

Michigan Journal of International Law

There is no magic formula for sustained economic development in poor countries. Strategies that succeed in one country may not be appropriate in another. Yet there are several broad similarities across the countries that have been most successful in achieving development over the past forty years. This Article takes a very broad overview of economic development in low-income countries over this period and makes three basic points.


Legal Institutions And International Trade Flows, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius, Katharina Pistor Jan 2004

Legal Institutions And International Trade Flows, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius, Katharina Pistor

Michigan Journal of International Law

Why do domestic legal institutions matter, and why can trading parties-in particular exporters of complex goods-not easily opt-out of their domestic legal institutions? The authors argue that domestic institutions remain important even in a globalized world, because they are the final option for enforcing a claim against a party in the event of a breach of contract. International contracts take place in the shadow of the parties' home institutions. Unless parties can negotiate a settlement, or the losing party voluntarily complies with a foreign court or arbitration ruling, the winning party must seek enforcement against the assets of the losing …


Methods Of Power For Development: Weapons Of The Weak, Weapons Of The Strong, John Braithwaite Jan 2004

Methods Of Power For Development: Weapons Of The Weak, Weapons Of The Strong, John Braithwaite

Michigan Journal of International Law

Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite conducted a study during the 1990s on global business regulation, interviewing more than five hundred key players in approximately twenty globalizing business regulatory regimes. Results from that study are used in this paper to inform the identification of seven elements of American power in global governance. The paper then poses the question whether those elements can be acquired by developing countries.


The Political Economy Of Rule Of Law Reform In Developing Countries, Ronald J. Daniels, Michael Trebilcock Jan 2004

The Political Economy Of Rule Of Law Reform In Developing Countries, Ronald J. Daniels, Michael Trebilcock

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this paper, the authors briefly review the recent experience with rule of law reform initiatives in Latin America, Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe, drawing on more detailed case studies by the authors. The authors are currently working on a similar case study on rule of law reform experiences in Asia.


Development, Globalization, And Law, Robert L. Kuttner Jan 2004

Development, Globalization, And Law, Robert L. Kuttner

Michigan Journal of International Law

Is global commerce under essentially laissez-faire rules optimal for economic development? In this era of liberated and deregulated markets, and after the final collapse of communism, a great many commentators would consider that a self-evident question. Of course free global commerce is good for economic development, because we know that the freest possible markets produce the most efficient use of resources and the highest available rates of economic growth. And growth benefits development. How could it be otherwise? And what is the role of law in facilitating commerce and in contouring a particular regime of domestic and transnational commerce and …


Development: Domestic Constraints And External Opportunities From Glabalization, T. N. Srinivasan Jan 2004

Development: Domestic Constraints And External Opportunities From Glabalization, T. N. Srinivasan

Michigan Journal of International Law

In what follows, this Article first discusses the process of development in Section II. Section III is devoted to the external aspects of development, namely international trade, finance, and intergovernmental organizations. Section IV is concerned with the domestic dimensions and legal reform, drawing on the debate on legal reforms in India. The author offers a few concluding remarks in Section V.


The Relationship Of Imf Structural Adjustment Programs To Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights: The Argentine Case Revisited, Jason Morgan-Foster Jan 2003

The Relationship Of Imf Structural Adjustment Programs To Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights: The Argentine Case Revisited, Jason Morgan-Foster

Michigan Journal of International Law

Perhaps as important as what this Note is, is what it is not: Economic theories abound concerning the causes of the Argentine crisis, some of which directly analyze the IMF's causal connection to the Argentine catastrophe. A Note on this subject would be one of economic theory, not international human rights law. While at certain points in the analysis of the human rights implications of SAPs, it will become difficult to avoid some speculation of economic theory, it is not the primary focus of this Note. Rather than implicate the IMF as part of the cause of the crisis, this …


Market Fundamentalism's New Fiasco: Globalization As Exhibit In The Case For A New Law And Economics, Steven A. Ramirez Jan 2003

Market Fundamentalism's New Fiasco: Globalization As Exhibit In The Case For A New Law And Economics, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz


Paradigm Shifts And Access Controls: An Economic Analysis Of The Anticircumvention Provisions Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Melissa A. Kern Jun 2002

Paradigm Shifts And Access Controls: An Economic Analysis Of The Anticircumvention Provisions Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Melissa A. Kern

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note addresses the broadened scope of protection granted to copyright holders under the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This broadened scope extends to copyright holders the right to control access to their works, diminishing the consumer's 'fair use" of those works that previously served as a defense to alleged copyright infringements. While access controls are supported by economists who believe they are useful in correcting market inefficiencies and excluding free riders, this Note suggests that access controls cannot correct all market inefficiencies. Furthermore, such access controls deny access and use of copyrighted material …


Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi May 1998

Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi

Michigan Law Review

Since World War II, public choice theory - defined broadly as the application of the assumptions and methodology of microeconomics to describe or predict the way public officials exercise power - has grown from a fledgling movement, gaining mainstream acceptance and respect for its insights into voting behavior, judicial decisionmaking, and other public actions. Although a theory first explored by economists and political scientists, public choice's normative insights have earned credibility in recent years in academic legal literature. Public choice's acceptance in the law school curriculum is demonstrated by the recent publication of course material on the topic. However, despite …


Public Choice Revisited, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey May 1998

Public Choice Revisited, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey

Michigan Law Review

Although not the first book on public choice_ for a legal audience, Max Stearns's Public Choice and Public Law is the first full-scale textbook for law school use. An ambitious undertaking by a rising young scholar, the book provides law students with a comprehensive introduction to public choice. Public choice - essentially, the application of economic reasoning to political institutions - has become a significant aspect of public law scholarship. Indeed, in his Foreword, Saul Levmore hails public choice as "[t]he most exciting intellectual development in law schools in the last decade" (p. xi). Be that as it may, the …


Startegy And Force In The Liquidation Of Secured Debt, Ronald J. Mann Nov 1997

Startegy And Force In The Liquidation Of Secured Debt, Ronald J. Mann

Michigan Law Review

The question of why parties use secured debt is one of the most fundamental questions in commercial finance. The commonplace answer focuses on force: A grant of collateral to a lender enhances the lender's ability to collect its debt by enhancing the lender's ability to take possession of the collateral by force and sell it to satisfy the debt. That perspective draws considerable support from the design of the major legal institutions that support secured debt: Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the less uniform state laws regarding real estate mortgages. Both of those institutions are designed solely …


The Origin, Development, And Regulation Of Norms, Richard H. Mcadams Nov 1997

The Origin, Development, And Regulation Of Norms, Richard H. Mcadams

Michigan Law Review

For decades, sociologists have employed the concept of social norms to explain how society shapes individual behavior. In recent years, economists and rational choice theorists in philosophy and political science have started to use individual behavior to explain the origin and function of norms. For many in this group, the focus of study is the interaction of law and norms, of formal and informal rules. Exemplified by Robert Ellickson's Order Without Law, this literature uses norms to develop more robust explanations of behavior and to predict more accurately the effect of legal rules. Norms turn out to matter in legal …


Positivism And The Separation Of Law And Economics, Avery Wiener Katz Jun 1996

Positivism And The Separation Of Law And Economics, Avery Wiener Katz

Michigan Law Review

The goal of this essay is to explain this problem and to translate the meaning of positivism between legal and economic cultures, in order to show economists and lawyers why much of the debate about the jurisprudential merits of law and economics misses the mark. My thesis is that it is positivism, and the way economic culture treats the positive-normative distinction, that is responsible for much of the gulf between law and economics - but that it is also positivism that makes economics so appealing to so many lawyers and legal scholars. For a positivist approach can be useful to …


Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein May 1996

Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William A. Fischel, Regulatory Takings: Law, Economics, and Politics


Overcoming Posner, Gerard V. Bradley May 1996

Overcoming Posner, Gerard V. Bradley

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Richard A. Posner, Overcoming Law


Risk Regulations And Its Hazards, Stephen F. Williams May 1995

Risk Regulations And Its Hazards, Stephen F. Williams

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation by Stephen Breyer


Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions In Law, Economics, And Public Policy, David A. Luigs May 1995

Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions In Law, Economics, And Public Policy, David A. Luigs

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions in Law, Economics, and Public Policy by Neal K. Komesar


Authors' Moral Rights In Non-European Nations: International Agreements, Economics, Mannu Bhandari, And The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jeffrey M. Dine Jan 1995

Authors' Moral Rights In Non-European Nations: International Agreements, Economics, Mannu Bhandari, And The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jeffrey M. Dine

Michigan Journal of International Law

This note undertakes to examine authors' moral rights in non-European countries. Section I will provide a brief comparative description of moral rights. Section II will discuss the treatment of moral rights in the Berne convention and the TRIPS agreement. Section III will then examine moral rights law in India and Israel, and two important cases from these nations, Mannu Bhandari v. Kala Vikas Pictures from India, and Qimron v. Shanks, from Israel. Mannu Bhandari deals with an author's moral right in the film adaptation of her work, Qimron with the moral rights of a scholar in the reconstruction of one …


Incommensurability And Valuation In Law, Cass R. Sunstein Feb 1994

Incommensurability And Valuation In Law, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this article I explore two claims and discuss their implications for law. The first claim is that human values are plural and diverse. By this I mean that we value things, events, and relationships in ways that are not reducible to some larger and more encompassing value. The second claim is that human goods are not commensurable. By this I mean that such goods are not assessed along a single metric. For reasons to be explored, the two claims, though related, are importantly different.