Law Commons^™

Review Of Leaving The Bench: Supreme Court Justices At The End, By D. N. Atkinson, Richard D. Friedman

Reviews

David Atkinson points out an interesting anomaly near the beginning of his book, Leaving the Bench: scholars have spent an enormous amount of energy studying entrance to the Supreme Court-how justices are chosen-but much less studying exit. It is indeed an important issue. Do justices stay too long (or perhaps leave too early)? What mechanisms are in place to induce them to leave the Court when the time has come, and passed? Are further mechanisms needed?

"Externalities And Other Parasites." Review Of The Strategic Constitution, By R. D. Cooter, And Constitutional Democracy, By D. C. Mueller, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

I shall argue that despite the occasional and charmingly belligerent pose struck by some economists of offering a superior alternative to conventional moral and political theory, economics is covertly parasitic on that theory. I begin in Part I by describing some of the core features of economic analysis and by disclosing my own sentiments about that analysis. The description will be terse, the disclosure partial. My aim is to identify, but certainly not pretend to resolve, some thorny methodological issues that surface in these two books. As for the disclosure, well, even if full disclosure were possible, which I doubt, …

Cardozo The [Small R] Realist, Richard D. Friedman

Reviews

In Part I of this Review, I will discuss aspects of Cardozo's life and character. In Part II, I will discuss Cardozo's jurisprudential theory as revealed in his lectures and essays. In Part IlI, I will suggest how we gain a better perspective on his judicial opinions by understanding not only that theory but also the man and his life.

Review Of The Dark Side Of The Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism In America, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

In this elegantly written, provocative, and sometimes just plain provoking book, punctuated by bits of anguish and rather more pique, Richard Ellis worries that the American Left has been so passionate about equality that it has run roughshod over liberty. So put, the thesis is not exactly news. It has been the recurrent lament of conservative indictments- Tocqueville's is the canonical statement, but he has plenty of precursors and followers. And it has its scholarly variations, too, such as Arthur Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement (1982). No profound surprises are on offer here.

Private Order And Public Institutions, Ellen D. Katz

Reviews

In Private Order Under Dysfunctional Public Order, John McMilan and Christopher Woodruff describe the private institutions that order commercial transactions in developing economies where commercial actors view the formal legal regime as unreliable. Presenting evidence from surveys of market participants in several Eastern European countries and in Vietnam, McMillan and Woodruff depict a system of private order that requires formal organization and the creation of institutions to share information and coordinate multiparty responses. These institutions do not simply offer a viable alternative to public procedures, but also enable commercial transactions to occur where the vacuum in public order would otherwise …

If Taxpayers Can't Be Fooled, Maybe Congress Can: A Public Choice Perspective On The Tax Transition Debate, Kyle D. Logue

Reviews

In When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity , Shaviro takes the various strands of the existing literature on retroactivity and weaves them together, applying his unique combination of legal expertise, political pragmatism, and theoretical sophistication in public finance economics as well as political science. The result is a subtle, balanced, and scholarly treatise on transition relief and retroactivity that should serve as the starting point for all future research in the field. In its stated objectives, the book is admirably ambitious.

This Review will, in a broad sense, follow Shaviro's characterization of the …