Law Commons^™

The State Attorney General And Preemption, Trevor W. Morrison

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

According to the National Association of Attorneys General, "the rise of preemption of state laws and regulations by federal administrative agencies, rather than directly by Congress" is "[p]erhaps the most significant development in federal preemption in the last several decades." This kind of preemption is typically claimed in an agency ruling or regulation declaring certain state laws or activities preempted, even though the underlying statute says nothing about preemption in those areas. That an association of state attorneys general would view "agency preemption" as particularly worrisome is hardly surprising: the main casualties are often state attorneys general, whose broad investigative …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE).

A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …