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Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

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Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadow of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes. Agency costs; attorney competence, compensation, and workloads; resources; sentencing and bail rules; and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments: overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems but sometimes overcompensate. The …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

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No abstract provided.

Interview With Leon S. Forman, Jason E. Dymbort, Leon S. Forman, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Leon S. Forman (L'39) was an authority on bankruptcy and creditors' rights. He practiced law for more than sixty years and served as chairman of the Philadelphia Bar Association's corporation, banking and business law section, and as chairman of the Pennsylvania Bar Association's bankruptcy committee. He was a member of the American Law Institute. He taught bankruptcy and creditors' rights at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania and at Temple University School of Law. He died in 2006.

Interview With Michael Levy, Christina Fahmy, Michael Levy, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above

Michael Levy (L '69) is the Chief of Computer Crimes at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He has served in the U.S. Department of Justice since 1980 with two one-year excursions into private practice. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Mr. Levy worked as a Public Defender and as an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia and as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He also had his own law practice for four years.

Constitutional Decision Rules, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

Race, Face, And Rawls, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

Jurisdictional Conflict And Jurisdictional Equilibration: Paths To A Via Media, Stephen B. Burbank

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No abstract provided.

The Conceptual Jurisprudence Of The German Constitution, William Ewald

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No abstract provided.

Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.

Integrating Remorse And Apology Into Criminal Procedure, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach

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No abstract provided.

Econometric Analyses Of U.S. Abortion Policy: A Critical Review, Jonathan Klick

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No abstract provided.

Copyright And Free Expression: The Convergence Of Conflicting Normative Frameworks, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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Recent attempts to expand the domain of copyright law in different parts of the world have necessitated renewed efforts to evaluate the philosophical justifications that are advocated for its existence as an independent institution. Copyright, conceived of as a proprietary institution, reveals an interesting philosophical interaction with other libertarian interests, most notably the right to free expression. This paper seeks to understand the nature of this interaction and the resulting normative decisions. The paper seeks to analyze copyright law and its recent expansions, specifically from the perspective of the human rights discourse. It looks at the historical origins of modern …

The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee

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Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress's authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President's control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the executive by committee employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a unitary executive, in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …

The Feeney Amendment And The Continuing Rise Of Prosecutorial Power To Plea Bargain, Stephanos Bibas

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No abstract provided.

Human Rights And National Security: The Strategic Correlation, William W. Burke-White

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No abstract provided.

Humanity And The Law, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Lawyer For The Situation, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Ripstein, Rawls, And Responsibility, Stephen R. Perry

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No abstract provided.

Functional Law And Economics: The Search For Value-Neutral Principles Of Lawmaking, Francesco Parisi, Jonathan Klick

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No abstract provided.

Reason, Results, And Criminal Responsibility, Stephen J. Morse

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No abstract provided.

Racial Dimensions Of Credit And Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

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No abstract provided.

"The Shame Of It All": Stigma And The Political Disenfranchisement Of Formerly Convicted And Incarcerated Persons, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

"A Question Which Convulses A Nation": The Early Republic's Greatest Debate About The Judicial Review Power, Theodore Ruger

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No abstract provided.

The Recently Revised Marriage Law Of China: The Promise And The Reality, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Rangita De Silva De Alwis

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In April 2001, the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China's highest legislative body, passed the long-debated and much awaited amendments to the Marriage Law on the closing day of its twenty-first session. As stated by one PRC commentator, "In the 50 years since the founding of the New China, there has not been any law that has caused such a widespread concern for ordinary people."'

Even though the recent revisions to the marriage laws have been hailed as some of the most significant and positive changes in family law in China, thus far no empirical evaluation …

The Social And Moral Cost Of Mass Incarceration In African American Communities, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.

Torture, Necessity, And The Union Of Law & Philosophy, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

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This brief essay critiques the torture memoranda's use of the necessity defense from the perspectives of criminal law doctrine, criminal law theory, and moral philosophy.

Atypical Pneumonia And Ambivalent Law And Politics: Sars And The Response To Sars In China, Jacques Delisle

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No abstract provided.

Of Predatory Lending And The Democratization Of Credit: Preserving The Social Safety Net Of Informality In Small-Loan Transactions, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

The Virtues Of Uncertainty In Law: An Experimental Approach, Tom Baker, Alon Harel, Tamar Kugler

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Predictability in civil and criminal sanctions is generally understood as desirable. Conversely, unpredictability is condemned as a violation of the rule of law. This paper explores predictability in sanctioning from the point of view of efficiency. It is argued that, given a constant expected sanction, deterrence is increased when either the size of the sanction or the probability that it will be imposed is uncertain. This conclusion follows from earlier findings in behavioral decision research and the results of an experiment conducted specifically to examine this hypothesis. The findings suggest that, within an efficiency framework, there are virtues to uncertainty …