Law and Economics Commons^™

Overcoming Obstacles To Worker Representation: Insights From The Temporary Agency Workforce, Danielle D. Van Jaarsveld

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Institutions For Worker Representation In The United States: Theoretical Issues, Alan Hyde

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Next Wave Organizing And The Shift To A New Paradigm Of Labor Law, Jim Pope

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Immigrant Workers Project Of The Afl-Cio, Rosanna M. Kreychman, Heather H. Volik

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Working Today, Sarah N. Kelly, Christine Tramontano

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Workplace Project, Emily Stein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Canadian Softwood Lumber And “Free Trade” Under Nafta, Sydney M. Cone Iii

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Psychology Of Emotional Legal Decision Making: Revulsion And Saving Face In Legal Theory And Practice, Peter H. Huang, Christopher J. Anderson

Publications

Professor Martha C. Nussbaum is an accomplished scholar in an impressive variety of fields. Drawing on her diverse academic backgrounds, Nussbaum has written extensively about emotions and their importance for law from the perspective of her primary specialty, philosophy. Her book Hiding from Humanity criticizes the roles that two particular emotions, disgust and shame, play in the law. Its central thesis is that, as legal actors, we should be wary of disgust and shame because indulging in those emotions allows us to hide from our humanity - both our humanity in the general sense and also those specific features of …

The Third Moment In Law And Development Theory And The Emergence Of A New Critical Practice, David M. Trubek, Alvaro Santos

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The study of the relationship between law and economic development goes back at least to the nineteenth century. It is a question that attracted the attention of classical thinkers like Marx and Weber. And there were some early efforts to craft policy in this area; for example, under the Raj, some English Utilitarians tried to put Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about law and economic progress into practice in India. But it was only after World War II that systematic and organized efforts to reform legal systems became part of the practice of international development agencies.

Initially, development agencies turned to law …

Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay develops an ideal of public legal reason--a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what the author calls public values--values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.

The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question--whether welfarism (a particular form of normative …

The Empirical Roots Of The 'Regulatory Reform' Movement: A Critical Appraisal, Richard Parker

Faculty Articles and Papers

Over the past few years the debate over the economic rationality of health, safety and environmental regulation has morphed into a sustained controversy over the tests and methods by which that rationality is judged. Critics have argued that the main regulatory scorecards which comprise much of the empirical foundation for the regulatory reform movement are fundamentally flawed because they: alter agency estimates of future costs and benefits; disregard most uncertainties; and misrepresent ex ante guesses as the costs and benefits of regulation. They also zero out whole categories of benefits that cannot be quantified and/or monetized even when the benefits …

Helping Those Who Are Helping Us: Sarbanes-Oxley Whistleblower Protection And Its Interplay With Arbitration, Adam Fisher

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The accounting profession took a major blow to its credibility in 2002 when numerous scandals surfaced on the front pages of newspapers seemingly everyday. The most notable stories told of two women who, despite the enormous pressure and harassment they knew they would face, came forward to reveal the ugly truth behind the facades of America's corporate skyscrapers. Cynthia Cooper and Sherron Watkins, employees at WorldCom and Enron respectively, blew the whistle on major accounting frauds at these companies. Their employers' retaliation was harsh and swift, revealing the truth about how todays' corporate juggernauts operate.

Ranks And Rivals: A Theory Of Competition, Avishalom Tor, Stephen M. Garcia, Richard Gonzalez

Journal Articles

Social comparison theories typically assume a comparable degree of competition between commensurate rivals on a mutually important dimension. In contrast, however, the following set of studies reveals that the degree of competition between such rivals depends on their proximity to a standard. Studies 1-3 test the prediction that individuals become more competitive and less willing to maximize profitable joint gains when they and their commensurate rivals are highly ranked (e.g., #2 vs. #3) than when they are not (e.g., #202 vs. #203). Studies 4-6 then generalize these findings, showing that the degree of competition increases not only for high ranks …

"We Shall Not Be Moved": Urban Communities, Eminent Domain And The Socioeconomics Of Just Compensation, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

If eminent domain is to serve true community development, statutory reforms must limit its propensity to abuse while still preserving its effectiveness. The first part of this article offers a normative legal theory of eminent domain as constrained by both the availability of alternative means of achieving public objectives and the inability of some condemnees to be made whole by cash compensation. The consideration of the land needs of both the condemnor and the condemnee is crucial to the respective evaluations of public use and just compensation as limitations on eminent domain. In the context of urban redevelopment, the theory …

Property Rules And Liability Rules, Once Again, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, new articles presenting rigorous analyses of bargaining incentives have overturned some of the fundamental claims made by Calabresi and Melamed in their seminal article on property rules and liability rules published in 1972. In particular, the proposition that property rules are socially preferable to liability rules when transaction costs are low appears to be either no longer valid or severely weakened under the new analyses. This paper reexamines the property rule versus liability rule question in light of the contributions of the recent bargaining theory literature. In contrast to this literature, I find that the fundamental propositions …

State Action Antitrust Exemption Collides With Deregulation: Rehabilitating The Foreseeability Doctrine, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

The state action antitrust exemption, also known as the state action immunity doctrine, is used by antitrust defendants to shield themselves against antitrust liability in instances where their anticompetitive conduct, if not under the aegis of state policy, would have been deemed a violation of federal antitrust law. Under the Midcal test, a court may grant state action immunity to a defendant if it is proven that the alleged anticompetitive conduct is pursuant to a clearly-articulated state policy and has been actively supervised by the state.

This paper evaluates the role, function, and definition of the state action exemption in …

Behavioral Genetics And Crime, In Context, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article provides an introduction to some of the key issues at the intersection of behavioral genetics and crime.

It provides, among other things, an overview of the emerging points of consensus, scientifically, on what behavioral genetics can and cannot tell us about criminal behavior. It also discusses a variety of important implications (as well as complexities) of attempting to use insights of behavioral genetics in legal contexts.

Penalty Defaults In Family Law: The Case Of Child Custody, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

This paper considers whether an amendment to state divorce laws that strengthens its joint custody preference operates as a traditional default rule, specifying what most divorcing couples would choose or as a penalty default rule the parties will attempt to contract around.

While the Oregon statutes that frame our discussion here, like most state laws, do not state an explicit preference for joint custody, shared custody is certainly encouraged by Section 107.179, which refers cases in which the parties cannot agree on joint custody to mediation and by Section 107.105, which requires the court to consider awarding custody jointly. In …

Credit Cards, Consumer Credit, And Bankruptcy, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the effects of credit card use on broader economic indicators, specifically consumer credit, and consumer bankruptcy filings. Using aggregate nation-level data from Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, I find that credit card spending, lagged by 1-2 years, has a strong positive effect on consumer credit. Finally, I find a strong relation between credit card debt, lagged by 1-2 years, and bankruptcy, and a weaker relation between consumer credit, lagged by 1-2 years, and bankruptcy. The relations are robust across a variety of different lags and models that account for problems of multicollinearity …

Remapping The Charitable Deduction, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

If charity begins at home, scholarship on the charitable deduction has stayed at home. In the vast legal literature, few authors have engaged the distinction between charitable contributions that are meant to be used within the United States and charitable contributions that are meant to be used abroad. Yet these two types of contributions are treated very differently in the Code and raise very different policy issues. As Americans' giving patterns and the U.S. nonprofit sector grow increasingly international, the distinction will only become more salient.

This Article offers the first exploration of how theories of the charitable deduction apply …

The Law And Economics Of Contracts, Benjamin E. Hermalin, Avery W. Katz, Richard Craswell

Faculty Scholarship

This paper, which will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Law and Economics (A.M. Polinsky & S. Shavell, eds.), surveys major issues arising in the economic analysis of contract law. It begins with an introductory discussion of scope and methodology, and then addresses four topic areas that correspond to the major doctrinal divisions of the law of contracts. These areas include freedom of contract (i.e., the scope of private power to create binding obligations), formation of contracts (both the procedural mechanics of exchange, and rules that govern pre-contractual behavior), contract interpretation (what consequences follow when agreements are …

Trade, Law And Product Complexity, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius

Faculty Scholarship

How does the quality of national institutions that enforce the rule of law influence international trade? Anderson and Marcouiller argue that bad institutions located in the importer’s country deter international trade because they enable economic predators to steal and extort rents at the importer’s border. We complement this research and show how good institutions located in the exporter’s country enhance international trade, in particular, trade in complex products whose characteristics are difficult to fully specify in a contract. We argue that both exporter and importer institutions affect international as well as domestic transaction costs in complex and simple product markets. …

Legal Ground Rules In Coordinated And Liberal Market Economies, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter seeks to explain the affinity between the nature of economic systems: coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs) on the one hand, and legal origin (civil vs common law systems) on the other. It starts with the simple observation that LMEs tend to be common law jurisdictions, and CMEs civil law jurisdictions. It proposes that the affinity between economic and legal system offers important insights into the foundations of different types of market economies and, in particular, differences in the scope of the state vs the powers of the individual. The main argument is that the …

The Regulation Of Labor And The Relevance Of Legal Origin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Arguably the most important social science research of the past decade has centered on comparative law and economics. In a celebrated series of articles, the economists Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and intermittent collaborators have explored empirically how a country's legal origin – English common law, French civil law, Germanic code, Scandinavian law, or Soviet socialist law – affects its subsequent institutional and economic development. The common law emerges as the hero of this analysis: Compared with other countries and especially with civil law countries, common law bearers have, ceteris paribus, better legal protection of shareholders and …

Dependency By Law: Poverty, Identity, And Welfare Privatization, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

Privatization of welfare reflects the political pressure to limit public responsibility for protection of social citizenship. Recent welfare reforms incorporate three classic market-like privatization mechanisms--contracting out services forcing allocation of a limited pool of benefits, and deregulation. Deregulation entails strategic diversion and disqualification of large numbers of would-be applicants who are left without alternatives to the labor market. In this article I discuss an empirical study of the effects of deregulation of welfare on the self-perceptions of recipients. Interviews with recipients and with low-wage health care workers, former recipients, show that, criticisms of welfare notwithstanding, they have embraced welfare reforms …

Boilerplate Today: The Rise Of Modularity And The Waning Of Consent, Margaret Jane Radin

Michigan Law Review

Thanks to the vision of Omri Ben-Shahar and the excellence of the scholars contributing to this symposium, students of the law of commercial exchange transactions will now understand how important and interesting, and indeed exciting, boilerplate really is. The various presentations are so rich that my assigned task of commentary cannot approach an adequate summation. Instead of attempting such a task, therefore, I will take up a slightly different one. My commentary will relate some of the ideas presented in the symposium to two themes that I think are significant for the groundwork of contract today: the growing modularity of …

The Law And Sociology Of Boilerplate, Todd D. Rakoff

Michigan Law Review

In my view, the scholarship presented at this symposium demonstrates that, in order to analyze form contracts and boilerplate successfully, one must carry out a set of operations that embodies an approach I will call law and sociology. But I presume I was invited to be a commentator at this conference on boilerplate not because the article I wrote on one branch of the subject awhile back exemplified this methodological approach, but because it took a rather strong substantive position. And so I think I ought first to say a brief word about that. The article in question concerned contracts …

The H’Aint In The (School) House: The Interest Convergence Paradigm In State Legislatures And School Finance Reform, Bryan Adamson

Faculty Articles

The purpose of this essay is to examine recent school funding litigation to illuminate the interest convergence paradigm, using the school finance reform controversy in Ohio as an example. Part I describes how the school finance reform debate is an extension of our nation's desegregation history. Part II looks at the school funding controversy in Ohio, highlighting legislator and citizen attitudes toward school finance litigation and public school funding along racial and geographic lines. Part III identifies six interests which emerge in the school funding dispute, arguing that these interests must be taken into account by legislators in crafting school …

The Entrepreneur And The Theory Of The Modern Corporation, Charles O'Kelley

Faculty Articles

The foremost description of the classic entrepreneur, immediately prior to the Great Depression and now, was presented by Frank Knight in his seminal work, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. In this Article, I will explicate Knight's theory of the entrepreneur and show how it relates to both the Berle-Means Paradigm and the nexus-of-contracts theory of the corporation. My effort here is in part intellectual history and in part the tentative beginnings of a new positive account of the corporation. In the latter regard, this Article takes only the first step in what may prove a quite exhaustive effort to re-plow the …

Foreword: Law, Business, And Economic Development - Current Issues And Age-Old Battles, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

On March 24, 2006, the Western New England College School of Law and School of Business jointly hosted the First Annual Academic Conference sponsored by the Western New England College Law and Business Center for Advancing Entrepreneurship. The Conference capped a year of exciting developments at the Law and Business Center, which is the College's contribution to the entrepreneurship infrastructure in the greater Springfield, Massachusetts area. Economists have understood for some time that small businesses are an important engine of economic development and vitality. Across the United States, 25 million small businesses employ more than half the country's workers, create …