Law and Economics Commons^™

The Future Debate On Multidisciplinary Practice In The United States, Sydney M. Cone Iii.

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Reasons Within Passions: Emotions And Intentions In Property Rights Bargaining, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This article discusses the role of emotions (or feelings or affects) in property rights bargaining. Real world people choose bargaining strategies based upon not only rational calculations, but also their gut feelings. This article considers the impact of anger and shame on bargaining over property rights and the Coase theorem. Such emotions may depend on beliefs (expectations or assessments) about whether particular strategic decisions should or will occur. Such beliefs can be viewed as attributions over the intentions of others.

A Normative Analysis Of New Financially Engineered Derivatives, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This Article analyzes whether the introduction of new derivative assets makes a society better or worse off. Because trading such non-redundant derivatives produces new distributions of income across time and over possible future contingencies, individuals can utilize such financial instruments to hedge risks not possible before the introduction of these assets. Thus, it may seem that new derivatives unambiguously benefit society. In fact, introducing sufficiently many new derivatives completes asset markets. Asset markets are complete if trading on them can attain every possible payoff pattern of wealth across time and over possible future contingencies. The first fundamental theorem of welfare …

The Illusion Of Efficiency In Workers' Compensation "Reform", Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

From the late 1980s to 1990s, most states enacted major revisions to their workers' compensation systems. These law changes aim to restrict benefits for injured workers in response to perceptions that rising workers' compensation insurance costs had reached crisis levels by the late 1980s. This article analyzes the main features of these benefit reforms, and shows how these reforms reveal the problems of the predominant economic efficiency rationales underlying recent retrenchment of social welfare programs in general.

Using workers' compensation as an example, I argue that a premise central to much of contemporary law and policy - the distinction between …

A New Options Theory For Risk Multipliers Of Attorney's Fees In Federal Civil Rights Litigation, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Given the importance of private enforcement of federal civil rights laws, Congress and the courts have attempted to encourage plaintiffs' attorneys to accept meritorious civil rights cases through fee shifting and risk multipliers. Recently, however, the Supreme Court has essentially prohibited the use of risk multipliers, thus undercompensating attorneys for the risk of losing civil rights actions and discouraging the filing of such cases. In this Article, Professor Huang develops a new options-based theory of calculating attorney's fees. Professor Huang argues that a lawsuit consists of a sequence of options to continue with the case rather than a once-and-for-all irreversible …

Toward Humanistic Theories Of Legal Justice, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In an oft-quoted aside, Justice Holmes once remarked that when lawyers in his courtroom make appeal to justice, he stops listening: such appeals do nothing but signal that the lawyer has neither the facts nor law on his side, or worse, that he is ignorant of whatever law might be relevant.' Holmes's remark has not gone unheeded. Holmes's legacy, in part, is precisely this lapse: we don't have, or teach, a guiding theory of legal justice, nor do we have, or teach, a family of competing theories of legal justice, that might inform our work in law, at least as …

On Game Theory And The Law, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Jeffrey E. Stake, Robert H. Heidt, Eric Rasmusen, Michael Alexeev

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Foreword, J. Dennis Hynes

Publications

No abstract provided.

Comment On Jana Singer's Alimony And Efficiency, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

I propose to make three comments on Professor Singer's article. First, I will present my views on the limitations of law and economics when applied to family law. Second, I will discuss why specialization between husbands and wives is not necessarily efficient, and perhaps not even the best use of law and economics in the study of the family. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, I will question whether there are gender differences that should impact alimony law.

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 …

Judicial Choice And Disparities Between Measures Of Economic Values, David Cohen, Jack L. Knetsch

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

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 …

Post-Revolutionary Law And Economics:A Foreword To The Symposium, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The Lanec (short for Law and Economics) movement of the 1970s hit the legal landscape like a nuclear device and permanently irradiated it. A couple of decades later, as we sift through the fallout, we are entitled to ask whether anything fundamental has changed. Every contributor to this Symposium seems to answer yes. Maybe they're like the book reviewer who believes deep in her heart that the book is worthless, but if she reveals it the editor will conclude that there is no point in printing her review. Let me put my own biases on the table. In general I …

A Bargaining Analysis Of American Labor Law And The Search For Bargaining Equity And Industrial Peace, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Economic Theory Of Politics And Legal Interpretation In The United States, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interest Group Politics And Judicial Behavior: Macey's Public Choice, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The economic theory of government has lately gained the acceptance in legal circles that it has long enjoyed in political science and economics. The economic theory, also known as "public choice," analyzes and explains government action and private political activity according to the basic assumption of economics, that individuals respond to economic incentives in their environments in a self-interested manner. The economic theory is thus useful descriptively, to explain diverse political phenomena, and prescriptively, to help formulate reform strategy.

Economic Rents And Essential Facilities, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents an economic analysis of the essential facility doctrine of antitrust. According to this doctrine, a firm or group of firms that possesses exclusive access to a cost-reducing facility must be prepared to share such access on fair terms with competitors.

The Law And Economics Of Organ Procurement, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents an economic analysis of the organ procurement system in the U.S. and examines proposals to alleviate the shortage of transplantable organs. The paper's principal conclusions are: (1) Although non-market solutions deserve the highest priority, demand increases fueled by improvements in transplant technology will probably make some market-based solution necessary in the future. (2) Quality deterioration and coercion will not necessarily be worrisome problems under a market-based procurement system.

The Efficient Consumer Form Contract: Law And Economics Meet The Real World, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

"Law and economics" has been hailed by its supporters as the only intellectually valid means for analyzing legal issues. Its critics have dismissed law and economics as amoral and biased against the poor. Ironically, each side in this frequently acrimonious debate has much to offer those in the opposing camp. This Article reflects a modest attempt to bridge the chasm.

One need not believe that money is everything in order to believe that the effect a given legal rule has on total societal wealth is relevant in decisionmaking. But this admission does not consign one to a legal world where …

An Economic Analysis Of The Criminal Law As A Preference-Shaping Policy, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Article I provide an economic analysis of criminal law as a preference-shaping policy. I argue that in addition to creating disincentives for criminal activity, criminal punishment is intended to promote various social norms of individual behavior by shaping the preferences of criminals and the population at large. By taking into account this preference-shaping function, I explain many of the characteristics of criminal law that have heretofore escaped the logic of the economic model. It is also the preference-shaping function and the prerequisite ordering of preferences that distinguish criminal law from tort law. My analysis suggests that society will …

The Strategic Structure Of Offer And Acceptance: Game Theory And The Law Of Contract Formation, Avery W. Katz

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to promote a particular research program; namely, the use of game theory to analyze the law of contract formation. Although I will often simply speak of offer and acceptance in my discussion, I mean to refer to a broader set of issues than are commonly denoted by this doctrinal label. My program transcends the narrow issue of whether particular communications technically should be classified as offers and acceptances, and includes questions often analyzed under the rubrics of implication and interpretation. At its broadest, my argument addresses all legal rules that answer two types of …

Corporate Control: Markets And Rules, Caroline Bradley

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Transaction Costs, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Cannibal Moves: An Essay On The Metamorphoses Of The Legal Distinction, Pierre Schlag

Publications

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 …

The Brilliant, The Curious, And The Wrong, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Place Of Law And Literature, William H. Page

Vanderbilt Law Review

The modern field of law and literature began in 1907 with the publication of Wigmore's list of novels related to law.' The form of that work is significant because for decades, the field remained largely one of reading lists assembled to broaden the perspectives of practicing lawyers. In literary scholarship, law and literature scarcely could have been called a field; critics discussed the effects of law on the work of various writers, often perceptively but their studies were independent of each other and of legal scholarship. In the past decade, however, law and literature has shed its nonprofessional heritage and …

An Appreciative Comment On Coase's The Problem Of Social Cost: A View From The Left, Pierre Schlag

Publications

Professor Coase's article, The Problem of Social Cost, played a significant role in launching the law and economics movement. Coase's insights have been used extensively by the law and economics movement as authority and inspiration for the development of an essentially right-leaning approach to law. In this Article, Professor Schlag undertakes to reexamine the original article. He shows that Coase's deconstructive moves opened up a series of volatile and radical inquiries. He then argues that the law and economics movement, in general, and Judge Posner, in particular, shut down the dangerous radicalism of these inquiries by hypostasizing Coase's insights …

The Role Of Efficiency Justifications In U.S.-American And West German Merger Control Law: A Comparison, Christian Westerhausen

LLM Theses and Essays

When merger control laws first emerged in the United States and West Germany in the early 1900s, some businessmen and economists argued that the efficiency of businesses was impeded by antimerger laws. They contended that only very large businesses could realize significant efficiencies, be internationally competitive, and attain technological progress. This paper analyzes the role that these efficiency arguments had on the laws in West Germany and the United States, respectively. German law mainly upheld the idea that preservation of competition was most important for business efficiency, but also included a provision that firms could put forward the social desirability …

Economic Analysis Of Liberty And Property: A Critique, Peter N. Simon

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 …