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Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2001

University of Michigan Law School

Public Law and Legal Theory

Decision making

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Pinocchio In Littleton, William A. Kell May 2001

Pinocchio In Littleton, William A. Kell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Professor Kell proposes a substantial change in policy direction in the wake of school shootings and other tragedies involving young people's abilities to make mature decisions. First, the Article questions the current state of the law which exclusively deems young people to be mature based on "birthdays and bad acts, " rather than on any concept of demonstrated or earned levels of responsibility. Next, an alternative legal framework is envisioned recognizing young people as increasingly competent citizens who must develop psychosocial maturity, including learning how to judge and utilize advice from others such as parents and peers, …


Precontractual Reliance, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Omri Ben-Shahar Jan 2001

Precontractual Reliance, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Omri Ben-Shahar

Articles

During contractual negotiations, parties often make reliance expenditures that would increase the surplus should a contract be made. This paper analyzes decisions to invest in precontractual reliance under alternative legal regimes. Investments in reliance will be socially suboptimal in the absence of any precontractual liability-and will be socially excessive under strict liability for all reliance expenditures. Given the results for these polar cases, we focus on exploring how "intermediate"-liability rules could be best designed to induce efficient reliance decisions. One of our results indicates that the case for liability is shown to be stronger when a party retracts from terms …