Law and Economics Commons^™

Chaos Theory And The Justice Paradox, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

"[T]he laws have mistakes, and you can't go writing up a law for everything that you can imagine."

"When you reach an equilibrium in biology you're dead."

As we approach the Twenty-First Century, the signs of social disarray are everywhere. Social critics observe the breakdown of core structures – the nuclear family, schools, neighborhoods, and political groups. As these traditional social institutions have disintegrated, the law has expanded to fill the void. There are more laws, more lawyers, and more use of legal mechanisms to accomplish social goals than at any other time in history. The custodians and interpreters of …

Sex, Reason, And A Taste For The Absurd, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Like much of Richard Posner's best work, Sex and Reason does many things, and for that reason will no doubt attract a large and diverse readership. This heavily footnoted, exhaustively researched, and imminently accessible book is a welcome introduction to the interdisciplinary study of sex. For the lay reader it presents an arresting set of speculations about human sexuality, drawn from the author's evident familiarity with a sizeable library of studies representing at least half a dozen scientific and social scientific disciplines, assembled in a readable and lively way. Of more interest, perhaps, to academicians and social scientists familiar with …

Procedural Fairness And Incentive Programs: Reflections On The Environmental Choice Program, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper explores the application of procedural fairness to the federal government’s Environmental Choice Program’s decision-making processes. While Canadian courts have traditionally required public bureaucrats to act “fairly” when implementing command models of regulation, they have only recently been confronted with demands that regulators implementing economic incentive programs also act in accordance with procedural fairness norms.

A Modern Proposal, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

This article humorously explains Jonathan Swift’s intention when he wrote “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country.” Swift was not writing satirically, his analysis was purely written from an economic standpoint as was Landes and Posner’s modern proposal. Landes and Posner recognized the allocative efficiencies and wealth gains that can be realized when property rights are created in noncommodities, such as people, as did Jonathan Swift.

Judicial Choice And Disparities Between Measures Of Economic Values, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

An important idea, which characterizes law in society, is a reluctance to move from the status quo. In general, one can argue that legal institutions and legal doctrine are not engaged in the redistribution of wealth from one party to another. This paper explores a possible explanation for that principle. The authors' research suggests that, across a wide range of entitlements and in a variety of contexts, individuals value losses more than foregone gains. The paper argues, as a matter of efficiency, that law and social policy might have developed in a manner consistent with this valuation disparity. Furthermore, this …

Improving The Procedure For Resolving Hearsay Issues, Richard D. Friedman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Options For Resolving Hearsay Issues, Roger C. Park

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law's Secrets, Gary T. Marx

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law by Kim Lane Scheppele

Social Irresponsibility, Actuarial Assumptions, And Wealth Redistribution: Lessons About Public Policy From A Prepaid Tuition Program, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I shall try to illuminate the question of how governments, as opposed to private insurers, grapple with the problem of intergenerational social irresponsibility. I shall do so by analyzing and criticizing a single public program. That program, the Michigan Education Trust (MET), was the most widely publicized government action in the field of higher education finance during the 1980s. MET allows parents of young children to purchase contracts promising to cover the children's tuition at Michigan public colleges when they enroll up to eighteen years later.

In setting forth this case study, I also attempt to develop …

Regulating Regulators: The Legal Environment Of The State, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this paper I focus on the ability of tort law to reduce primary costs, or losses associated with the number and seriousness of accidents. In one sense I will be analysing the state as if it were a private firm in which losses suffered by private individuals and firms are externalities. Several years ago Mark Spitzer wrote a paper on this topic in which he posited several models of state activity and analysed the incentive effects of liability rules in each case. In my view Spitzer's general conclusion - the rule which may be synthesized from all of the …

Sugar Coated Bullets: Corruption And The New Economic Order In China, Mark Findlay, Thomas Chor-Wing Chiu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The recent political debate concerning the influence of corruption on the “new economic order” in the People's Republic of China is unique not only for its detailed and public manifestations, but also because it works around the acceptance of some degree of corporate private ownership of the means of production within China. The concern for corruption in Chinese government and commerce is not, of itself, novel.We prefer in this paper briefly to focus on the economic and political environment from within which this concern has been generated, to comment on the significance for the Government of the PRC in associating …

Cable Traffic And The First Amendment Must-Carry Under A Diversity Approach And Antitrust As Possible Alternative, Bruno Vandermeulen

LLM Theses and Essays

Recent technological progress in the field of telecommunications has greatly changed the competitive structure between broadcasters, cable operators, and telephone companies. The legal and economic environment for these media participants has shifted, and new problems have arisen. One major problem is the enhanced threat of concentration of media corporations, as corporate bigness becomes desirable and the number of diversified owners of media outlets continues to decrease. This paper analyzes broadcasting regulations and subsequent case law to show the concern by the legislature and regulatory agencies to preserve diversity in opinion and media-ownership through emphasis on “localism” and a “marketplace of …

Questioning Broadcast Regulation, Jonathan Weinberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Seven Dirty Words and Six Other Stories: Controlling the Content of Print and Broadcast by Matthew L. Spitzer

Regulation And The United States Corporation: An Alternative To Law-And-Economics, Jan G. Deutsch

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Economic Man And Literary Woman: One Contrast, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The law and literature movement has been with us long enough that it is now possible to speak seriously of a "literary analysis of law," just as it has become possible, and even standard, to speak of an "economic analysis of law." It is also standard, of course, to speak of that abstract character who has emerged from the economic analysis of law: "economic man." In these brief comments, I want to offer one contrast of the "economic man" that emerges from economic legal analysis with the "literary person" that is beginning to emerge from literary legal analysis. I will …

Out-Of-State Attorney Fee Forfeiture, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Conservation Movement In A Corporate Age, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Some Considerations Which May Lead Lawmakers To Modify A Policy When Adopting It As Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Authority, Autonomy, And Choice: The Role Of Consent In The Moral And Political Visions Of Franz Kafka And Richard Posner, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In "The Ethical and Political Basis of Wealth Maximization" and two related articles, Professor (now Judge) Richard Posner argues that widely shared pro-autonomy moral values are furthered by wealth-maximizing market transfers, judicial decisions, and legal institutions advocated by members of the "law and economics" school of legal theory. Such transactions, decisions, and institutions are morally attractive, Posner argues, because they support autonomy; wealth-maximizing transfers are those to which all affected parties have given their consent. This Article argues that Posner's attempt to defend wealth-maximization on principles of consent rests on a simplistic and false psychological theory of human motivation. Posner's …

Charting The Future Course For Corporate Management Of Health Risks, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Corporations engage in technological activities of benefit to society, but thereby also create new health risks for workers, consumers, and communities. Government regulatory agencies deal with this chronic problem by conducting risk analyses and imposing various duties on private firms. Despite agency efforts and corporate compliance, health risks continue to arise and take their toll. To what extent will private firms voluntarily assume greater responsibility for preventing these health risks? This question is of increasing social importance, because the limitations of regulatory efforts are now obvious, whereas health risks are now being identified at what appears to be an increasing …

The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker

Articles & Book Chapters

The author reviews the historical development of the decision-making frameworks within which courts and the Legislature have made choices regarding the allocation of risks to health and safety in the workplace. Arguing that this development has been conditioned by the necessity of satisfying in a capitalist democracy conflicting demands to facilitate capital accumulation and to justify to the electorate the manner in which choices regarding the structure of the processes of production have been made, the author contends that recent pressure to adopt cost-benefit analysis to satisfy the demands of legitimation and accumulation, and challenges its adequacy as a normative …

The Legalization Of American Society: Economic Regulation, Peter O. Steiner

Michigan Law Review

My central thesis is that regulation may be insightfully classified into three broad types of response to perceived market failure, and I will merely touch examples of each. The first is protection of competitive results. I shall focus on natural monopoly regulation, although anti-trust would do as well. The second is protection from competitive results, such as entry control and setting of minimum prices. The third is regulation of externalities such as pollution and accidents arising as byproducts of more usual production.

The Economics Of Justice, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Economics of Justice by Richard A. Posner

Rawls, Justice, And The Income Tax, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Scholarly Works

To the extent the primacy of justice is acknowledged in tax policy debate, such acknowledgment is coupled with the assertion that, of course, questions of justice cannot be meaningfully debated. The discussants then attempt to resolve the issue in question by use of ad hoc arguments of fairness and efficiency. The major purpose of this article is to show that not only is justice the primary issue, but that questions of justice can be meaningfully addressed. First, I will examine some of the ad hoc arguments of fairness and efficiency which have been made by proponents of a consumption base …

The Social And Political Challenge Of Inflation: An Economist's View, Harold T. Shapiro

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Special Issue of the Journal of Law Reform has been nourished, at least in an emotional sense, by this same concern. The editors of the Journal apparently share the widespread frustration regarding what seem to increasing numbers of citizens as the largely intractable nature of the country's current economic ills. There is a certain apprehension that we may not be able to develop solutions to our lagging productivity, to our continuing inflation and unemployment, to our energy "problem," or to a host of other "economic" issues currently outstanding on the national agenda: unemployment of young people and minorities, environmental …

Double Jeopardy Of Corporate Profits, The , Constantine N. Katsoris

Faculty Scholarship

The more one reads about our economy, the more one is baffled and alarmed. Permanent solutions to economic problems are elusive. Treating one financial malaise often aggravates another sector of the economy, necessitating a delicate balancing of conflicting interests. Furthermore, the problems are complicated by the constant influence of foreign forces. Nevertheless, most economists agree that any solution will require enormous funding. Unfortunately, the public has little, if any, confidence in our tax system. Indeed, some tax laws and proposals have been referred to as "obscene" and a "disgrace to the human race." Few quarrel with the aptness of such …

Book Review, John H. Davidson Jr.

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Politicalization Of The Corporation, Phillip Blumberg

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Arthur H. Travers Jr.

Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - State Control Of Interstate Migration Of Indigents, Edward W. Adams

Michigan Law Review

The interstate migration of persons presents the United States with one of its most acute economic and social problems and carries in its wake a series of significant legal questions. Of paramount importance is the constitutional question whether the migration of indigents is subject to state control. To lend understanding to this problem, attention will be called first to the basic economic and social urges underlying interstate migration and second to the position of the indigent as defined by traditional legal concepts. To complete the discussion, suggestions will be offered for corrective federal legislation.