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Full-Text Articles in Law

Docketology, District Courts And Doctrine, David A. Hoffman, Alan J. Izenman, Jeffrey Lidicker Jan 2007

Docketology, District Courts And Doctrine, David A. Hoffman, Alan J. Izenman, Jeffrey Lidicker

All Faculty Scholarship

Empirical legal scholars have traditionally modeled trial court judicial opinion writing by assuming that judges act rationally, seeking to maximize their influence by writing opinions in politically important cases. Support for this hypothesis has reviewed published trial court opinions, finding that civil rights and other "hot" topics are more likely to be explained than purportedly ordinary legal problems involved in resolving social security and commercial law cases. This orthodoxy comforts consumers of legal opinions, because it suggests that they are largely representative of judicial work. To test such views, we collected data from a thousand cases in four different jurisdictions. …


Behavioral Biology, The Rational Actor Model, And The New Feminist Agenda, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone Jan 2007

Behavioral Biology, The Rational Actor Model, And The New Feminist Agenda, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this paper, we will incorporate gender consciousness into critiques of the rational actor model by revisiting Carol Gilligan's account of moral development. Economics itself, led by the insights that have come from game theory, is reexamining trust, altruism, reciprocity and empathy. Behavioral economics, defined as "the combination of psychology and economics that investigates what happens in markets in which some of the agents display human limitations and complications," further explores the implications of a more robust conception of human motivation. We argue that the most likely source for a comprehensive theory will come from the integration of behavioral economics …