Law Commons^™

Real People, Real Resources, And Real Choices: The Case For Market Valuation Of Water, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

How is one to value water? Indeed, how does anyone value anything? There are three broad categories of answers to these questions. One relies on the notion of an intrinsic value of a good. In other words, there is a definitive value of a particular good, and this value can be determined by some means. Theological speculations on the "just price" of a good and other speculations on "innate values" of various things often fall into this category. A second category of answers is to deny that a particular good is capable of valuation. Human lives, for example, are often …

Homesteading Rock: A Defense Of Free Access Under The General Mining Law Of 1872, Andrew P. Morriss, Roger E. Meiners, Andrew Dorchak

Andrew P. Morriss

The Mining Law of 1872 is one of the most reviled federal land laws, regularly drawing attacks as anachronistic, corporate welfare, a relic of pioneer days, and a source of major environmental problems. Born out of the experience of the nineteenth century mineral rushes, the Mining Law allows individuals to privatize both the surface estate and the mineral rights to public land containing minerals (with some exceptions) without requiring a significant payment to the public treasury for the land This "giveaway" aspect of the law draws the loudest protests. The authors argue that it is inappropriate to measure the net …

Measuring Outcomes: Post-Graduation Measures Of Success In The U.S. News & (And) World Report Law School Rankings, Andrew P. Morriss, William D. Henderson

Andrew P. Morriss

The U.S. News & World Report annual rankings play a key role in ordering the market for legal education, and, by extension, the market for entry level lawyers. This Article explores the impact and evolution of placement and post-graduation data, which are important input variables that comprise twenty percent of the total rankings methodology. In general, we observe clear evidence that law schools are seeking to maximize each placement and post-graduation input variable. During the 1997 to, 2006 time period, law schools in all four tiers posted large average gains in employment rates upon graduation and nine months, which appear …

The Market For Legal Education & Freedom Of Association: Why The Solomon Amendment Is Constitutional And Law Schools Are Not Expressive Associations, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

This term the Supreme Court will confront the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, which mandates equal access for military recruiters at universities that accept federal funding. The Third Circuit previously held the statute unconstitutional. This Article argues that the Court should reverse and uphold the statute because the lower court failed to consider the cartelized nature of legal education and so assumed that law schools are "expressive associations" entitled to assert First Amendment claims; the court also failed to give proper deference to Congress's exercise of its Article I power to raise and support armies and over-valued law faculties' interest …

Enduring Hierachies In American Legal Education, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, Andrew P. Morriss, William D. Henderson

Andrew P. Morriss

Although much attention has been paid to U.S. News & World Report's rankings of U.S. law schools, the hierarchy it describes is a long-standing one rather than a recent innovation. In this Article, we show the presence of a consistent hierarchy of U.S. law schools from the 1930s to the present, provide a categorization of law schools for use in research on trends in legal education, and examine the impact of U.S. News's introduction of a national, ordinal ranking on this established hierarchy. The Article examines the impact of such hierarchies for a range of decision making in law school …

Litigating To Regulate: Massachusetts V. Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

By a 5-4 vote in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court took yet another significant step away from the Framers' vision of the judiciary and toward a politicized Supreme Court sitting as a super-legislature and super-regulator. The Court substituted its judgment for that of the politically accountable branches of the federal government. By dramatically loosening the rules of standing, the Court invited those unhappy with the federal government's failure to regulate in a particular manner in any substantive area to use the federal courts to force federal agencies to regulate. In short, the Court encouraged interest groups …

Introduction, Symposium Lsu J. Energy L. & Resources, Roger Meiners, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The intersection of property rights and energy resource development is an increasingly important, and contentious, area of the law. From local fracking ordinances to federal overrides of state sovereignty in permitting multistate infrastructure projects, the law is in flux. In this symposium, a group of lawyers, law professors, and economists were gathered to look at some of these issues.

Legal Argument In The Opinions Of Montana Territorial Chief Justice Decius S. Wade, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Decius Spear Wade was the longest serving member of the Montana Territorial Supreme Court, holding the Chief Justiceship between 1871 and 1887, more than sixteen years. Wade authored an impressive 192 majority opinions, along with fourteen concurrences and dissents, of the total of 637 reported majority opinions issued by that court. By productivity and length of service alone, Wade stands out on the Montana court and among territorial judges generally. Unlike many territorial judges, including some of his brethren on the Montana court, Wade was well-regarded by his contemporaries. Subsequent observers have also ranked Wade among the best of the …

The Next Generation Of Mobile Source Regulation, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

In the U.S. we have reached the point where further reductions in per-mile emissions from individual mobile sources of criteria pollutants will be both tiny and expensive. In addition, as population grows, total mobile source emissions in developed countries are likely to increase as our ability to engineer reductions on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis reaches its technological limit and is overwhelmed by the rising numbers of miles driven. Mobile source emissions world-wide will climb as greater wealth in the developing world fuels the demand for mobility. This article examines the demand for transportation and the regulation of transportation fuels and then …

The Fable Of The Codes: The Efficiency Of The Common Law, Legal Origins, And Codification Movements, Nuno Garoupa, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The superior efficiency of the common law has long been a staple of the law and economics literature. Generalizing from this claim, the legal origins literature uses cross-country empirical research to attempt to demonstrate this superiority by examining economic growth rates and the presence of common law legal systems. We argue that this literature fails to adequately characterize the relevant legal variables and that its reliance on broad-brush labels like “common law” and “civil law” is inappropriate.

In this Article, we first examine the efficiency literature’s claims about the common law and find that it fails to accurately account for …

Market Fragmenting Regulation - Why Gasoline Costs So Much (And Why It's Going To Cost More), Andrew P. Morriss, Nathaniel Stewart

Andrew P. Morriss

Virtually everyone holds an opinion on what is wrong with gasoline markets. Some critics argue that gasoline costs too much, fattening greedy oil barons at the expense of consumers. Some link reducing oil producers' profits to stopping terrorism. Others contend that gasoline costs too little, subsidizing suburban sprawl and gas-guzzling SUVs at the expense of the environment. Web sites track gasoline prices and grocery stores sell low-cost fuel to lure shoppers. Policy makers debate whether gas taxes should be cut to lower the cost of living; need to be increased to make drivers pay the full cost of their behavior; …

Moving Money: International Financial Flows, Taxes, And Money Laundering, Richard Gordon, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Allegations by political leaders and others that offshore financial centers enable multinational enterprise to avoid paying a “fair” amount of tax — and that they enable wealthy individuals to evade paying any tax, much of it on ill gotten gains — are once again garnering headlines and inspiring government action. One of the most prominent commentators on these topics, The Tax Justice Network, has recently claimed that thanks to the services of tax havens $21-$32 trillion of wealth of questionable origin remains hidden and untaxed, and that such abuse must be stopped through greater regulation. In this paper we argue …

Birth After Death: Perpetuities And The New Reproductive Technologies, Sharona Hoffman, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The Rule Against Perpetuities ("Rule" or "RAP") has long terrorized law students and lawyers alike: "no interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after some life in being at the creation of the interest." Despite this deceptively simple formulation, the Rule's complexities have bedeviled generations of property students and practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic. Reformers argue that the Rule's complexity is unnecessary to achieve the Rule's objectives and turns it into merely a malpractice trap. Despite this "reign of terror," the Rule continues to apply in various forms in most …

Bootleggers, Baptists &(And) Televangelists: Regulating Tobacco By Litigation, Bruce Yandle, Joseph A. Rotondi, Andrew P. Morriss, Andrew Dorchak

Andrew P. Morriss

The bootleggers and Baptists public choice theory of regulation explains how durable regulatory bargains can arise from the tacit collaboration of a public-interest-minded interest group (the Baptists) with an economic interest (the bootleggers). Using the history of tobacco regulation, this Article extends the bootleggers and Baptists theory of regulation to incorporate the role of policy entrepreneurs like the state attorneys general and private trial lawyers who joined forces to regulate tobacco by litigation. We denominate these actors televangelists and demonstrate that they play a pernicious role in regulation.

The Article begins by showing how tobacco regulation through the 1980s fit …

Property Rights, Pesticides, & (And) Public Health: Explaining The Paradox Of Modern Pesticide Policy, Andrew P. Morriss, Roger E. Meiners

Andrew P. Morriss

The lesson of DDT's rise and fall is that property rights play a critical role in checking public policy abuses. Respect for property rights requires public actors to obtain property owners' consent before they take actions (e.g. pesticide spraying) that affect the property owners. When property rights are respected, spillover impacts are minimized. Public policies imposed without consent, even if done with good intentions, may produce bad effects. Those effects may result in the policy being rightly abandoned, but may also spur other policies that produce more bad effects. Only by consistent respect for property rights, by both governments and …

Symbol Or Substance: An Empirical Assessment Of State Responses To Kelo, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The Kelo decision provoked considerable legislative activity as 46 states adopted legislation on eminent domain in its aftermath. Only about half adopted restrictions that were more than symbolic, however. This paper examines those responses using a logistic regression analysis and finds that all else equal: (1) states where legislatures were more constrained by tax and expenditure limits were less likely to adopt substantive restrictions; (2) a larger number of Republicans in the state legislature made a state more likely to adopt a substantive restriction; (3) overall Republican strength (as measured by gubinatorial [sic] elections) made states less likely …

Specialized Labor And Employment Law Institutions In New Zealand And The United States, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Legal specialization takes several forms: decision-makers and advocates can specialize in particular types of cases, specialized rules can govern particular types of disputes, facts may be found by experts, appeals heard by special courts, or some or all of these combined. The American and New Zealand employment and labor law regimes make different use of specialized decision-makers, in part because of differences in their use of specialized legal rules for labor and employment law. These differences provide an opportunity to assess the appropriateness of specialization in legal decisionmaking.

Specialization in the legal system is simply one form of the more …

Bootleggers, Baptists, And Televangelists, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The history of tobacco regulation includes quite a few episodes of bootleggers-and-Baptists coalitions in the 1960s and 1970s. While there were sporadic efforts to suppress tobacco use almost from the time it appeared in Europe-- James I of England published A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco in 1604, denouncing smoking as "a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lung, and the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horribly Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless"-- serious regulatory efforts appeared in the United States only in the 1960s. Prior to then, …

This State Will Soon Have Plenty Of Laws - Lessons From One Hundred Years Of Codification In Montana, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Part II of this Article briefly sketches the codification movement in the United States and the conditions in Montana in the 1890s. The remainder of Part II tells the story of Montana's adoption of the Civil, Criminal, Political, and Civil Procedure Codes of 1895. Part III examines in detail the subsequent treatment of some of the employment law sections of the Civil Code. Part IV draws lessons from codification and the Codes' application for future legal reform efforts.

Constitutionalizing Patents: From Venice To Philadelphia, Craig Allen Nard, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Patent law today is a complex institution in most developed economies and the appropriate structure for patent law is hotly debated around the world. Despite their differences, one crucial feature is shared by the diverse patent systems of the industrialized world even before the recent trend toward harmonization: modern patent regimes include self-imposed restrictions of executive and legislative discretion, which we refer to as "constitutionalized" systems. Given the lucrative nature of patent monopolies, the long history of granting patents as a form of patronage, and the aggressive pursuit of patronage in most societies, the choice to confine patents within a …

Codification And Right Answers, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Hayek & (And) Cowboys: Customary Law In The American West, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The settlement of the American West during the nineteenth century produced a flourishing Hayekian legal because of the extended absence of state-based legal systems from large parts of the West. Without the crowding out of private law that accompanies the state's assertion of a monopoly over some areas of the law and subsidized competition in others, individuals created dispute resolution mechanisms and rules based on custom and contract. These examples of systems built by not-particularly-well-educated cowboys, gold miners, and migrants suggest that Hayekian legal orders can serve as effective, complete substitutes for state-provided law.

This paper surveys Hayek's legal theory, …

The Destructive Role Of Land Use Planning, Andrew P. Morriss, Roger E. Meiners

Andrew P. Morriss

Is land use planning fundamentally different from other forms of central planning? If so, does that difference suggest that land use planning will succeed where other forms of central planning failed? We conclude that land use planning is not fundamentally different from other forms of economic central planning. Further, the working of the market economy, and the long-term success of America's economy, is intertwined in the clear and certain rights and responsibilities generated by the common law of property. The complexity of the modem world does not diminish the need for private property; indeed, it strengthens its imperative. Returning to …

Hardrock Homesteads: Free Access And The General Mining Law Of 1872, Andrew P. Morriss, Roger E. Meiners, Andrew Dorchak

Andrew P. Morriss

Most discussions of the US General Mining Law of 1872 begin with the premise that the statute is an outdated relic of 19th-century attitudes towards resources and should be replaced with a modern system of royalties, permits and concessions. In contrast, this article argues that the statute provides institutional mechanisms that resolve incentive problems created by government ownership of mineral resources. Instead of calling for radical change in US mining laws, the authors hold up the free access principle of the General Mining Law of 1872 as a model for privatisation of assets whose value is unknown.

Involuntary Cotenants: Eminent Domain And Energy And Communications Infrastructure Growth, Andrew P. Morriss, Roy Brandys, Michael M. Barron

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Principles For Water, Andrew P. Morriss, Bruce Yandle, Terry L. Anderson

Andrew P. Morriss

Water issues are often contentious. How much water can one individual use? What must the water quality of water returned from use be? How much water must be allocated to uses such as maintaining sufficient instream flows for aquatic species? For the last century, the United States has largely such answered questions through command and control regulatory schemes rather than through markets and common law dispute resolution processes. The choice of regulation by institutions over other mechanisms has meant a reliance on centralized decisionmaking and a rejection of both the market's more decentralized institutions and the common law.

Recently, water …

Introduction: The Virtues And Vices Of Skeptical Environmentalism, Jonathan H. Adler, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

Introduction Extract:

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg' is the most talked about environmental book in recent memory. Lomborg's central thesis is relatively straightforward: "Our doomsday conceptions of the environment are not correct." To the contrary, in recent decades humanity's lot has "improved in terms of practically every measurable indicator." Lomborg is not the first author to make this argument,4 but his book is the first to spark such a maelstrom of public attention. Its publication ignited controversy and debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Lomborg himself, an associate professor of statistics …

Legal Arguments In The Opinions Of Montana Territorial Chief Justice Decius S. Wade, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Private Amici Curiae And The Supreme Court's 1997-1998 Term Employment Law Jurisprudence, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The amicus curiae brief has become a common occurrence in today's legal arena, especially with the proliferation of private interest groups that specialize in numerous topics of political and social interest. The substantial increase in the use of amici briefs, however, has sparked criticism concerning both the costs (in effort and resources) associated with filing these griefs and the persuasive effect (or lack thereof) the briefs have on the Court. Much of this criticism arises from the failure of many interest groups to posit "legal" arguments that apply the facts of a given case to the law. Instead, the amici …

Green Jobs Myths, Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Andrew Dorchak, Roger E. Meiners

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.