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Public Law and Legal Theory

2013

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Articles 1 - 30 of 37

Full-Text Articles in Law and Economics

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller Nov 2013

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …


The Commons, Capitalism, And The Constitution, George Skouras Oct 2013

The Commons, Capitalism, And The Constitution, George Skouras

George Skouras

Thesis Summary: the erosion of the Commons in the United States has contributed to the deterioration of community and uprooting of people in order to meet the dynamic demands of capitalism. This article suggests countervailing measures to help remedy the situation.


Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim Oct 2013

Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Andrew Chongseh Kim

Courts and scholars commonly assume that granting convicted defendants more liberal rights to challenge their judgments would harm society’s interests in “finality.” According to conventional wisdom, finality in criminal judgments is necessary to conserve resources, encourage efficient behavior by defense counsel, and deter crime. Thus, under the common analysis, the extent to which convicted defendants should be allowed to challenge their judgments depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice to validate defendants’ rights. This Article argues that expanding defendants’ rights on post-conviction review does not always harm these interests. Rather, more liberal review can often conserve state resources, …


The Legitimacy Of Crimmigration Law, Juliet P. Stumpf Aug 2013

The Legitimacy Of Crimmigration Law, Juliet P. Stumpf

Juliet P Stumpf

Crimmigration law—the intersection of immigration and criminal law—with its emphasis on immigration enforcement, has been hailed as the lynchpin for successful political compromise on immigration reform. Yet crimmigration law’s unprecedented approach to interior immigration and criminal law enforcement threatens to undermine public belief in the fairness of immigration law. This Article uses pioneering social science research to explore people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of crimmigration law. According to Tom Tyler and other compliance scholars, perceptions about procedural justice—whether people perceive authorities as acting fairly—are often more important than a favorable outcome such as winning the case or avoiding arrest. Legal …


A Market For Tax Compliance, Walter E. Afield Iii Aug 2013

A Market For Tax Compliance, Walter E. Afield Iii

Walter E Afield III

It is becoming increasingly clear that, due to political realities and budgetary constraints, the IRS is going to have to attempt to enforce the tax laws by doing more with less. Current enforcement efforts have yielded a tax gap (i.e., the difference between the amount of taxes that should be paid and the amount that are collected) of roughly $450 billion annually. Faced with this task, one of the steps that the IRS has recently taken is to try to improve the quality in services performed by paid tax preparers, a group that historically has been subject to little IRS …


Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron Aug 2013

Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services.


Mitigating The Problem Of Vulture Holdout: International Certification Boards For Sovereign Debt Restructurings, John A. E. Pottow Aug 2013

Mitigating The Problem Of Vulture Holdout: International Certification Boards For Sovereign Debt Restructurings, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers

The Great Recession has brought greater sovereign debt defaults, which in turn has brought a surfeit of academic explorations and policy discussions of sovereign debt restructuring. The purpose of this article is to offer yet one more idea for the hopper of what to do with the seemingly intractable problem of restructuring sovereign bond debt. The field does not lack for statutory and contractual proposals, from SDRM to CACs, but it is not yet sufficiently saturated that another proposal cannot join the mix. The proposal is for the establishment of international certification boards that can give a stamp of approval …


Expanding The Inner Circle: How Welfarist Norms Escape In-Groups, Alexander D. Jakle Jul 2013

Expanding The Inner Circle: How Welfarist Norms Escape In-Groups, Alexander D. Jakle

Alexander D. Jakle

I explore the influence of social mechanisms by which welfarist norms come to be appropriate by those outside the social group for which they were developed, and how they lead to patterned deviance from the law. Drawing on literature from law and society, law and economics, political science, social theory, and other fields, I use original research from a qualitative study of amateur baseball players to analyze the interplay between norms, groups, and deviance. Relationships with agents is widespread, despite being against both NCAA Bylaws and most players economic incentives. To explain this seemingly irrational pattern of rule-breaking, I argue …


The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Confidence, Self-Deception, And Their Effects On "Rationality" And Deviance, Alexander D. Jakle Jul 2013

The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Confidence, Self-Deception, And Their Effects On "Rationality" And Deviance, Alexander D. Jakle

Alexander D. Jakle

Law and economics suggests that we behave in ways that maximize our preferences, but what if we are deceived about what we want or how best to get it? This article explores how the psychology of self-deception can be marshaled to explain unexpected patterns of law-breaking and deviance. Using original research from a qualitative case study of amateur NCAA baseball players, I examine the ways in which self-deception leads us to systematically reinterpret and process information, fundamentally changing how we weigh the costs and benefits associated with breaking rules. Our preferences are inextricably interwoven with our identities, and we go …


How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire Jul 2013

How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire

John D Gleissner Esquire

No abstract provided.


Democracy V. Capitalism: An Inquiry Into The Role Of Government In The Economy, Daniel J. Boyle Jun 2013

Democracy V. Capitalism: An Inquiry Into The Role Of Government In The Economy, Daniel J. Boyle

Daniel J Boyle

Our modern social contract is mired in conflict between two opposing ideological views and systems: one that believes the optimal path to prosperity requires minimalist government involvement and the other which believes that government should guarantee social and economic welfare for society. Ideologically based arguments on each side drive a further wedge between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” The challenge of resolving these conflicting views is perhaps the most fundamental issue facing the world. The conflicts that have arisen in our societies in recent years—the backlash over globalization, the financial crisis, the European debt crisis, and many others—have parallels in …


Science And Compliance In The Arctic: A Constructivist Approach To The Un Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Sari M. Graben, Peter Harrison Jun 2013

Science And Compliance In The Arctic: A Constructivist Approach To The Un Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Sari M. Graben, Peter Harrison

Sari M Graben

The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is expected to play an essential role in delineating the rights of the Arctic states to sea bed resources in the Arctic Ocean. Positivist theories of international law generally source Arctic state compliance to the binding effect of Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, positivist explanations fail to answer why the Arctic states, which are authorized to establish their own limits, would accept the sovereignty costs associated with the Commission’s legal and scientific interpretations. In order to better understand how the Commission …


Meaning In The Natural World, Joseph Vining May 2013

Meaning In The Natural World, Joseph Vining

Law & Economics Working Papers

James Boyd White devoted much of his work to the rescue of meaning in language, art, and the human world. A turn to the natural world may underscore his confidence that an individual's statement of law can be more than a disguised expression of individual will and desire. This essay may also suggest one more way toward hope that a realistic sense of the natural world need not threaten confidence in the reality of beauty and meaning in our human world.


Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum May 2013

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.


Democracy, Law And Global Finance: An Example Of A Research Agenda For A New Practice Of Law And Economics, Tamara Lothian May 2013

Democracy, Law And Global Finance: An Example Of A Research Agenda For A New Practice Of Law And Economics, Tamara Lothian

Tamara Lothian

No abstract provided.


Combating Obesity With A Right To Nutrition, Paul Diller Apr 2013

Combating Obesity With A Right To Nutrition, Paul Diller

Paul Diller

Domestic and international law have, in different ways, recognized a human right to food since the twentieth century. The original reason for this recognition was the need to alleviate a particular type of food insecurity—“traditional” hunger, as manifested in conditions like malnutrition and underweight. The current public-health crisis of obesity, however, demands a reconsideration of this right. The food environment in the United States today is awash in high-calorie, low-nutrient food products that are often cheaper, on a relative basis, than more nutritious foods, leading to the overconsumption of the former by much of the American population. Merely ensuring a …


Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz Mar 2013

Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Law & Economics Working Papers

Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on their differences in risk profiles, first, so that they can charge different premiums to the different groups based on their risk and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are, however, limits to the types of discrimination we will allow insurers to engage in. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting insurers’ …


The Independent Medicare Advisory Committee: Death Panel Or Smart Governing?, Robert Coleman Mar 2013

The Independent Medicare Advisory Committee: Death Panel Or Smart Governing?, Robert Coleman

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.


South Dakota: Making Dollars And Sense Of Indian Child Removal, Rachael Whitaker Mar 2013

South Dakota: Making Dollars And Sense Of Indian Child Removal, Rachael Whitaker

Rachael Whitaker

South Dakota- Making Dollars and Sense of Indian Child Removal By: Rachael Whitaker In 2004, a South Dakota Governor’s Commission report adamantly denied claims that the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) is “harvesting Indian children as a cash crop” and “runs nothing more than a state sponsored kidnapping program.” National Public Radio (NPR) broke a story in 2011, claiming South Dakota removed Indian children for profit. Since NPR’s report, the state has remained tight-lipped, advocates have threatened litigation, and Congress has asked for answers. South Dakota has a small population and economy, and it receives almost half of its …


Poisoning The Next Apple? The America Invents Act And Individual Inventors, David S. Abrams, R. Polk Wagner Mar 2013

Poisoning The Next Apple? The America Invents Act And Individual Inventors, David S. Abrams, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, the most significant patent law reform effort in two generations, has a dark side: It seems likely to decrease the patenting behavior of small inventors, a category which occupies special significance in American innovation history. In this paper we empirically predict the effects of the major change in the law: a shift in the patent priority rules from the United States’ traditional “first-to-invent” system to the predominant “first-to-file” system. While there has been some theoretical work on this topic, we use the Canadian experience with a similar change as a natural experiment to shed …


Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson Feb 2013

Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson

Dru Stevenson

Between the Civil War and World War II, every state and the federal government shifted toward codified versions of their statutes. Academia has so far ignored the systemic effects of this dramatic change. For example, the consensus view in the academic literature about rules and standards has been that precise rules present higher enactment costs for legislatures than would general standards, while vague standards present higher information costs for courts and citizens than do rules. Systematic codification – featuring hierarchical format and numbering, topical arrangement, and cross-references – inverts this relationship, lowering transaction costs for legislatures and increasing information costs …


The Chilean Constitutional Court And The 2005 Reform: A Castling Between Career Judges And Academics, Diego G. Pardow Feb 2013

The Chilean Constitutional Court And The 2005 Reform: A Castling Between Career Judges And Academics, Diego G. Pardow

Diego G. Pardow

Using a series of logistic regression analyses, this paper argues that the Chilean Constitutional Court is becoming more active in asserting constitutional rights. Before the reform, the pattern was favoring the incumbent government and deciding the cases by unanimity. After the reform the frequency of dissenting opinions increased, while the level of deference with the government decreased. We also argue, however, that any political analysis should proceed with caution. Career judges dominated the pre-reform Court, whereas justices coming from an academic environment were the ones filling those positions after the reform. Interestingly, Chilean judges have a long-standing reputation of being …


Consumer Debt And Usury: A New Rationale For Usury , Robin A. Morris Jan 2013

Consumer Debt And Usury: A New Rationale For Usury , Robin A. Morris

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Employment Law And Social Equality, Samuel R. Bagenstos Jan 2013

Employment Law And Social Equality, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Law & Economics Working Papers

What is the normative justification for individual employment law? For a number of legal scholars, the answer is economic efficiency. Other scholars argue, to the contrary, that employment law protects against (vaguely defined) imbalances of bargaining power and exploitation. Against both of these positions, this paper argues that individual employment law is best understood as advancing a particular conception of equality. That conception, which many legal and political theorists have called social equality, focuses on eliminating hierarchies of social status. Drawing on the author’s work elaborating the justification for employment discrimination law, this paper argues that individual employment law is …


Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz Jan 2013

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …


New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Some advocates of sustainable development possess an almost theological faith in what I refer to as “rhetorical” sustainable development as the path to providing for the sound future of human civilizations and critical ecological systems. Simply put, if we try to think “too big” and “bite off too much” then the system we are trying to control or influence consumes us and our resources and we fail miserably. There is real and predictable danger in grandeur. This means we need to think about achieving sustainability in very specific and concrete terms applied to clear goals and an honest understanding of …


Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert C. Hockett Jan 2013

Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Global trade imbalance and domestic financial fragility are intimately related. When a nation runs persistently massive current account deficits to maintain global liquidity as has the United States now for decades, its central bank effectively relinquishes exchange rate flexibility to become a de facto central bank to the world. That in turn prevents the bank from playing its essential credit-modulatory role at home, at least absent strict capital controls that are difficult to administer and have long been taboo. And this can in turn render credit-fueled asset price bubbles and busts all but impossible to prevent, irrespective of the nation's …


Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy Jan 2013

Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy

Law & Economics Working Papers

Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require private insurance plans sold in the individual and small-group markets to cover a roster of “essential health benefits.” Precisely which benefits should count as essential, however, was left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The matter was both important and controversial. HHS nonetheless announced its policy on essential health benefits by posting on its website a 13-page bulletin stating that it would allow each state to define essential benefits for itself by choosing a “benchmark” plan modeled on existing plans in the state. On …


How Tax Increment Financing (Tif) Districts Correlate With Taxable Properties, Randall K. Johnson Jan 2013

How Tax Increment Financing (Tif) Districts Correlate With Taxable Properties, Randall K. Johnson

Journal Articles

TIF literature does not answer a basic question:Does this economic development tool positively correlate with expanded tax bases? The question is important because it avoids the difficult issue of causation, while also yielding insight into the nature of the relationship between TIF and expanded tax bases. As a result, this Article answers the question for suburban Cook County, Illinois.


Unenforceability, Lee Petherbridge Ph.D., Jason Rantanen, R. Polk Wagner Jan 2013

Unenforceability, Lee Petherbridge Ph.D., Jason Rantanen, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

The patent doctrine of inequitable conduct—which allows a patent to be held unenforceable on the basis of misbehavior by the applicant during patent prosecution—has been the subject of intense criticism from the bench and bar alike. And yet to date there has been no systematic attempt to determine whether the doctrine is or is not working as theorized. This study fills that gap. We evaluate the performance of the inequitable conduct doctrine with a novel methodological approach: by empirically characterizing the differences between patents found unenforceable and several other types of patents (unlitigated, litigated, invalid, obvious, and underdisclosed), we use …