Law Commons^™

Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Ethics And The 21st Century University, Judith Bailey

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center of the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University

Nietzsche’S Place In Nineteenth Century German Philosophy, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Decision Rules, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race, Face, And Rawls, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Personal Practical Conflicts, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

This preliminary reflection about practical conflicts confronting single agents does little to solve the problems conflicts create. Rather, it attempts to explain what conflicts are and what questions they raise. I suggest that we have two distinct notions of single-agent conflicts reflecting two distinct theoretical questions. The first concerns the possibility of there being a right action in conflict situations. It is the question of whether and, if so, how reasons deriving from different concerns or affecting different people can be of comparable strengths. The second concerns a sense that there is something unfortunate about conflicts and that when facing …

Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …

Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This essay, however, does not press any particular agenda; rather, it tries to make our thinking about the topic more flexible. It is my hope that some conduct-specific rule as was adopted in the defamation context will eventually be adopted for intellectual property. Copyright law cannot continue forever closing its eyes and hoping its house will stop being haunted.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Humanity And The Law, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyer For The Situation, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ripstein, Rawls, And Responsibility, Stephen R. Perry

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racism's Past And Law's Future, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

Legal scholars, lawmakers and, increasingly, the general public seem to place ever-increasing hope in the potential of law and legal theory, and of enforceable uniform international legal standards. Many appear to believe that identifying and enacting laws and a legal framework that correspond worldwide to human rights will solve the age-old problem of legalized barbarism. The historical propensity of courts, even in democratic states, to legitimate and enable racist policies provides compelling evidence that the current level of faith in law is misplaced.

This Article argues the limitations of law and legal theory, contesting the view that on their own …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …