Law Commons^™

Una Comparazione Tra Le Reti Di Amministratori Nelle Principali Societa Quotate In Italia, Francia E Gran Bretagna, Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Andrea Polo, Enrico Gagliardi

Carlo Drago

The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the empirical literature on country interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships in the first 40 Italian, French and British Blue Chips as of December 2007 (Italy)/March 2008 (France and uk). The theoretical literature identify two possible explanations for interlocking directorships, on the one hand the collusion among players in the same market or in general among enterprises that have business relations among themselves; on the other hand the interest for enterprises to have on their boards bankers, suppliers, and clients so as to reduce information asymmetries. Our findings …

A Study In Rule-Specific Issue Categorization For E-Rulemaking, Claire Cardie, Cynthia R. Farina, Adil Aijaz, Matt Rawding, Stephen Purpura

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We address the e-rulemaking problem of categorizing public comments according to the issues that they address. In contrast to previous text categorization research in e-rulemaking, and in an attempt to more closely duplicate the comment analysis process in federal agencies, we employ a set of rule-specific categories, each of which corresponds to a significant issue raised in the comments. We describe the creation of a corpus to support this text categorization task and report interannotator agreement results for a group of six annotators. We outline those features of the task and of the e-rulemaking context that engender both a non-traditional …

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

David A Hoffman

Empirical legal scholars have traditionally modeled 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 opinions, finding that civil rights and other “hot” topics are more to be discussed than other issues. This orthodoxy comforts consumers of legal opinions, because it suggests that opinions are largely representative of judicial work. The orthodoxy is substantively and methodologically flawed. This paper starts by assuming that judges are generally risk averse with respect to reversal, and that they provide opinions when they believe that …

Bounded Rationality And Legal Scholarship, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

Decision theory seems to offer a very attractive normative framework for individual and social choice under uncertainty. The decisionmaker should think of her choice situation, at any given moment, in terms of a set of possible outcomes, that is, specifications of the possible consequences of choice, described in light of the decisionmaker’s goals; a set of possible actions; and a "state set" consisting of possible prior "states of the world." It is this framework for choice which provides the foundation for expected utility theory, as demonstrated in the work of Leonard Savage. Problems arise, however, when the decisionmaker is boundedly …

Wrongly Accused Redux: How Race Contributes To Convicting The Innocent: The Informants Example, Andrew E. Taslitz

Andrew E. Taslitz

This article analyzes five forces that may raise the risk of convicting the innocent based upon the suspect's race: the selection, ratchet, procedural justice, bystanders, and aggressive-suspicion effects. In other words, subconscious forces press police to focus more attention on racial minorites, the ratchet makes this focus every-increasing, the resulting sense by the community of unfair treatment raises its involvment in crime while lowering its willingness to aid the police in resisting crime, innocent persons suffer when their skin color becomes associated with criminality, and the police use more aggressive techniques on racial minorities in a way that raises the …

Wrongly Accused Redux: How Race Contributes To Convicting The Innocent: The Informants Example, Andrew E. Taslitz

School of Law Faculty Publications

This article analyzes five forces that may raise the risk of convicting the innocent based upon the suspect's race: the selection, ratchet, procedural justice, bystanders, and aggressive-suspicion effects. In other words, subconscious forces press police to focus more attention on racial minorites, the ratchet makes this focus every-increasing, the resulting sense by the community of unfair treatment raises its involvment in crime while lowering its willingness to aid the police in resisting crime, innocent persons suffer when their skin color becomes associated with criminality, and the police use more aggressive techniques on racial minorities in a way that raises the …

Cascading Infrastructure Failures: Avoidance And Response, George H. Baker, Cheryl J. Elliott

George H Baker

No critical infrastructure is self-sufficient. The complexity inherent in the interdependent nature of infrastructure systems complicates planning and preparedness for system failures. Recent wide-scale disruption of infrastructure on the Gulf Coast due to weather, and in the Northeast due to electric power network failures, dramatically illustrate the problems associated with mitigating cascading effects and responding to cascading infrastructure failures once they have occurred.

The major challenge associated with preparedness for cascading failures is that they transcend system, corporate, and political boundaries and necessitate coordination among multiple, disparate experts and authorities. This symposium brought together concerned communities including government and industry …