Law Commons^™

The Effects Of Property Titling In Langa Township, South Africa, Karol C. Boudreaux

Karol C. Boudreaux

This paper explores the role titling programs play in alleviating poverty in a township outside Cape Town, South Africa. Successive South African government have worked to provide secure title to formerly disenfranchised citizens. Today, most non-shack dwelling in Langa Township have registered titles. Has this effort resulted in economic growth? The answer is a qualified yes. Titleholders engage in incremental improvements but make little use of titles as collateral for commercial credit. Reasons for the general relutance among homeonwers in this township to use their titles as collateral are examined.

International Human Rights And Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Role Of Institutional Psychiatry In The Suppression Of Political Dissent, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

For many years, institutional psychiatry was a major tool in the suppression of political dissent. Moreover, it appears painfully clear that, while the worst excesses of the past have mostly disappeared, the problem is not limited to the pages of history. What is more, the revelations of the worst of these abuses (and the concomitant rectification of many of them) may, paradoxically, have created the false illusion that all the major problems attendant to questions of institutional treatment and conditions in these nations have been solved. This is decidedly not so.

Remarkably, the issue of the human rights of persons …

Trade, Law And Product Complexity, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius

Faculty Scholarship

How does the quality of national institutions that enforce the rule of law influence international trade? Anderson and Marcouiller argue that bad institutions located in the importer’s country deter international trade because they enable economic predators to steal and extort rents at the importer’s border. We complement this research and show how good institutions located in the exporter’s country enhance international trade, in particular, trade in complex products whose characteristics are difficult to fully specify in a contract. We argue that both exporter and importer institutions affect international as well as domestic transaction costs in complex and simple product markets. …