Law Commons^™

Can We Build Behavioral Game Theory?, Gale M. Lucas, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

The way economists and other social scientists model how people make interdependent decisions is through the theory of games. Psychologists and behavioral economists, however, have established many deviations from the predictions of game theory. In response to these findings, a broad movement has arisen to salvage the core of game theory. Extant models of interdependent decision-making try to improve their explanatory domain by adding some corrective terms or limits. We will make the argument that this approach is misguided. For this approach to work, the deviations would have to be consistent. Drawing in part on our experimental results, we will …

The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Collective Action Federalism And Its Discontents, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

An increasing number of scholars argue that the Commerce Clause is best read in light of the collective action problems that the nation faced under the Articles of Confederation. The work of these “collective action theorists” is reflected in Justice Ginsburg’s opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. Writing for four Justices, she stressed the “collective-action impasse” at the state level to which the Affordable Care Act responds.

In its purest form, a collective action approach maintains that the existence of a significant problem of collective action facing two or more states is both necessary and sufficient …

The Broken Safety Net: A Study Of Earned Income Tax Credit Recipients And A Proposal For Repair, Sara Sternberg Greene

Faculty Scholarship

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest federal antipoverty program in the United States and garners almost universal bipartisan support from politicians, legal scholars, and other commentators. However, assessments of the EITC missed an imperative perspective: that of EITC recipients themselves. Past work relies on largely unconfirmed assumptions about the behaviors and needs of low-income families. This Article provides a novel assessment of the EITC based on original data obtained directly from 194 EITC recipients through in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings are troubling: They show that while the EITC has important advantages over welfare, which it has largely …

Where Should Europe’S Investment Path Lead?: Reflections On August Reinisch, “Quo Vadis Europe?”, Julie A. Maupin

Faculty Scholarship

Relative to the past policies of its Member States, will the European Union’s new comprehensive international investment policy constitute a step forward, a step backward, or a perpetuation of the status quo? Professor Reinisch’s contribution to this volume opens a wide window on the current state of the debate. His cogent analysis suggests that, at present, all three possibilities remain live ones, although some basic contours of a likely trajectory are beginning to take shape. I use his musings as a springboard to investigate two questions which follow naturally from his. That is, in view of Professor Reinisch’s response to …

Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom in international law is that dispute resolution institutions sharpen the reputational costs to states. This article challenges this understanding by examining how the inclusion of dispute resolution tribunals and remedy regimes can alter reputational analysis by shifting the audience¹s understanding of how mandatory a treaty's substantive obligations are. Drawing on the distinction between prices and sanctions, this article contests the assumption that the introduction of a remedy regime in international agreements will regularly increase compliance with the treaty¹s substantive terms. Instead, some remedy regimes may 'price' deviations from the treaty¹s terms and thereby facilitate breaches of the …

Military Justice, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Happiness Surveys And Public Policy: What’S The Use?, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based on coefficients in a happiness equation.

But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur …

Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Plenary Power Preemption, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Makes The Family Special?, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Edward D. Stein, Joanna L. Grossman, Kerry Abrams, Holning Lau, Katharine S. Silbaugh, Et Al In Support Of Respondents, Hollingsworth V. Perry, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Registering Relationships, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Despite the dramatic changes in family structure in the past decades — including the unprecedented and skyrocketing number of families who live in non-marital arrangements — marriage and marriage-mimic institutions remain the only legal options for the recognition of relationships. This regulatory regime leaves millions of Americans without the means to establish and protect relationship rights. The article suggests that the legal issues arising from non-marital relationships would be best addressed if more options for legal recognition of such relationships were offered. Accordingly, this article presents the primary principles of a registration-based marriage alternative, founded on contract: “registered contractual relationships.” …

The China-United Kingdom Income Tax Treaty (2011), Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

The author, in this article, considers some of the key features of the China-United Kingdom Income Tax Treaty (2011), with particular reference to the provisions on technical fees, permanent establishments, passive and other income, and anti-avoidance rules.

Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity. Failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel, endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, and undermines the integrity and fairness of immigration systems. Introduced in the Canadian House of Commons in June 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) includes proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would enhance …

The Other Section 7, Margot Young

All Faculty Publications

The somewhat rudimentary notions of liberty, life and security of the person that are corralled by traditional section 7 jurisprudence are not the sole indicator of what the section potentially ought to, and indeed may ultimately, protect and ensure. It is now fairly well established that the rights section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects apply well outside the sphere of criminal law. Two strands of expansion exist, one less controversial than the other. First, it is relatively clear that section 7 encompasses executive administration of the law. The second path of expansion allows section 7 …

State Ownership And Corporate Governance In China: An Executive Career Approach, Li-Wen Lin

All Faculty Publications

China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) now comprise over 60 percent of the largest 500 companies in China and more than 10 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world. Despite their importance to China’s domestic economy and foreign investment strategy, many governance characteristics of the SOEs remain a black box, one of which is the SOEs’ executive composition and recruitment development. This Article shifts away from the typical focus on how the things function (e.g. ownership structure and board of directors) to who the people in charge are, which is an important approach to understanding corporate governance and economic development …

Embodied Conflict Resolution: Resurrecting Roleplay-Based Curricula Through Dance, Nadja Alexander, Michelle Lebaron

All Faculty Publications

Moving on from the authors’ seminal 2009 critique of the overuse of role-plays in negotiation teaching, "Death of the Role-Play" (chapter 13 in Rethinking Negotiation Teaching), Alexander and LeBaron have taken the rapidly increasing enthusiasm for experiential learning in a new direction: multiple intelligences. Their particular interest is in a use of experiential learning that focuses on kinesthetic intelligence, employing actual physical movement, particularly dance, to unlock creativity in other mental domains, as well as to encourage authentic participation by people whose skills are not primarily verbal or mathematical. Those who may be inclined to be skeptical should note that …

Evolving Capacities: The B.C. Representative For Children And Youth As A Hybrid Model Of Oversight, Mary Liston

All Faculty Publications

This paper explores hybrid models of oversight through an examination of a new institutional creation: British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth (BC RCY). The paper argues that societal changes in the conception of children’s worth have significantly affected approaches to child welfare and have also stimulated institutional innovation. The paper begins with a historical overview of the legal and moral status of children, focusing on the child as the subject of government protection, and then considers the evolution of children’s rights in the twentieth century. This conceptual shift from children as passive objects of paternal state care to (near) …

The Inefficiencies Of Legislative Centralization: Evidence From Provincial Tax Rate-Setting, Wei Cui, Zhiyuan Wang

All Faculty Publications

Legislative power in China is centralized to an unusual degree. This arrangement is both positively and normatively significant, but has received little attention in prior scholarship. We devise a novel method for analyzing the consequence of centralization by examining provincial rate setting for the vehicle and vessel tax (VVT). Because all provinces have assigned VVT revenue and VVT administration to sub-provincial governments, provincial rate-setting represents centralized, not decentralized, decision-making. Using spatio-econometric analyses, we find that provincial tax rate choices fail to reflect local economic and demographic conditions and display traces of tax mimicking. Both support the hypothesis that provincial officials …

Admissibility Compared: The Reception Of Incriminating Expert Evidence (I.E., Forensic Science) In Four Adversarial Jurisdictions, Gary Edmond, Emma Cunliffe, Simon A. Cole, Andrew J. Roberts

All Faculty Publications

There is an epistemic crisis in many areas of forensic science. This crisis emerged largely in response both to the mobilization of a range of academic commentators and critics and the rise and influence of DNA typing. It gained popular and authoritative support through the influence of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and a surprisingly critical report produced under its auspices by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC). Interestingly, as this article endeavors to explain, the courts themselves seem to have played a rather indirect, inconsistent and ultimately ineffective role in the supervision and evaluation of forensic …

Untold Stories Or Miraculous Mirrors? The Possibilities Of A Text-Based Understanding Of Socio-Legal Transcript Research, Emma Cunliffe

All Faculty Publications

Austin Sarat has described legal understandings of the transcript as “the verbatim record of a present soon to become past, a mirror/a record/a voice machine in which the “author” exercises no authorial presence.” In this paper I argue that when seeing a transcript as an authorless mirror of court proceedings, lawyers and socio-legal scholars risk overlooking the ways in which the technology of transcripts influences the record that is produced. Paying attention to the laws and practices governing transcript production allows those who engage in transcript research to appreciate how the transcript is defined in relation to the spoken proceedings …

‘Don't Read The Comments!’: Reflections On Writing And Publishing Feminist Socio-Legal Research As A Young Scholar, Emma Cunliffe

All Faculty Publications

This article responds to reviews written by Eve Darian-Smith and Mehera San Roque and published in Feminists@Law. Darian-Smith and San Roque's reviews focus on the contributions made by my 2011 book, Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. In this response, I have taken the opportunity to reflect a little on the experience of writing Murder, Medicine and Motherhood, and on its reception. In the first section, I trace the choices and unanticipated challenges that structured my research for Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. Both Darian-Smith and San Roque have commented on this methodology, and I have noticed that after publication, the scope and …

How The Charter Has Failed Non-Citizens In Canada – Reviewing Thirty Years Of Supreme Court Of Canada Jurisprudence, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

This paper presents a study of all of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Charter-era jurisprudence addressing the rights of non-citizens. It traces the jurisprudential evolution from early decisions strongly supportive of non-citizens’ rights claims, to more recent rulings where non-citizens’ rights claims are rejected, sidelined or even ignored. Patterns in decision making are discernible and the decline in protections for non-citizens follows logically enough from a series of interpretive stances made relatively early on. There is evidence here of what I have termed ‘Charter hubris.’ This is a leading factor in explaining the current state of affairs, which works alongside …

Tax Treatment Of Charitable Contributions In A Personal Income Tax: Lessons From Theory And Canadian Experience, David G. Duff

All Faculty Publications

A hundred years after tax concessions for charitable contributions were introduced as part of the personal income taxes that many countries enacted during the First World War, these countries continue to debate the appropriate level and structure of tax concessions for charitable gifts. This chapter considers the tax treatment of charitable contributions in a personal income tax, reviewing and evaluating alternative rationales for tax recognition of charitable gifts as well as the implications of these rationales for the form that tax recognition should take, and examining recent Canadian experience in light of these rationales.

Dogs And Tails: Remedies In Administrative Law, Cristie Ford

All Faculty Publications

Administrative law in Canada, as in many other Commonwealth countries, centers around judicial review doctrine. Sometimes, one may even get the sense that administrative law and administrative law remedies begin at the point at which a party to an administrative action seeks judicial review of that action through the courts. Yet an overly tight focus on court action misses the hugely important first step in real-life administrative action: the varied and sometimes creative, purpose-built remedies that a tribunal itself may impose. This chapter seeks to provide a broader overview of administrative law remedies as a whole, including not only judicial …

Innovation-Framing Regulation, Cristie Ford

All Faculty Publications

This paper aims to provide insights into the effective regulation of private sector innovation. It coins a term – “innovation-framing regulation” – to describe a particular quality of the regulation that characterized much of financial regulation in the recent era. After briefly sketching a particular financial innovation (securitization and the marketing of securitized assets on the derivatives markets) it describes three regulatory interactions with that innovation: the Basel II Capital Accords, the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Crisis in Canada, and the ongoing notice-and-comment rulemaking process surrounding the Volcker Rule in the United States. While each case study is different, in each …

Bordering On Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy And The Politics Of Refugee Exclusion, Efrat Arbel, Alletta Brenner

All Faculty Publications

In June 2012, the Canadian government ushered in sweeping reforms to Canada’s refugee system. These reforms brought debates about Canadian refugee protection to the forefront of legal and political discourse. In advancing these reforms, the Canadian government has asserted that Canada’s refugee system is among the most generous and compassionate in the world. Canada’s doors, the Canadian government has stated, remain open to legitimate refugees. This report evaluates these claims by examining the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement and border measures implemented under the rubric of the Multiple Borders Strategy, and analyzing their effects on asylum seekers. A detailed examination …

Shifting Borders And The Boundaries Of Rights: Examining The Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada And The United States, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the Canadian Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal decisions assessing the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States (STCA). It examines how each court’s treatment of the location and operation of the Canada-US border influences the results obtained. The article suggests that both in its treatment of the STCA and in its constitutional analysis, the Federal Court decision conceives of the border as a moving barrier capable of shifting outside Canada’s formal territorial boundaries. The effect of this decision is to bring refugee claimants outside state soil within the fold of Canadian constitutional …

Greensboro And Beyond: Remediating The Structural Sexism In Truth And Reconciliation Processes And Determining The Potential Impact And Benefits Of Truth Processes In The United States, Peggy Maisel

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last 35 years approximately forty truth commissions have investigated human rights violations and abuses in a wide range of countries and communities. Each of these forty commissions provides different lessons on how investigating and testifying about past abuse can lead to healing and change. I have participated in two of the more remarkable Truth and Reconciliation processes, the first as an observer, the other as an advisor. The former is perhaps the most widely known and discussed TRC process, the one which took place in South Africa from 1996 to 1998 that examined the entire apartheid era in …