ABSTRACT Most Contracts casebooks feature either Baird v. Gimbel or Drennan v. Star Paving to illustrate the limits on revocability of an offer. In this article an analysis of the case law yields three major conclusions. First, as is generally known, in the contractor–subcontractor cases Drennan has prevailed. However, both it and its spawn, Restatement 2d 87(2), have had almost no impac…
ABSTRACT In nine experiments—one a questionnaire given to Israeli judges, the rest on the World Wide Web—we examined the effect of probability of detection of an offense on judgments of punishment. When cases differing in probability were separated, we found almost no evidence for attention to probability (as found previously by others). When cases were presented next to each other, ho…
ABSTRACT ‘‘Subsidization’’ by member governments occurs in the U.S. federal system, the WTO, and the European Union. These three legal systems have responded very differently to the issues raised by subsidies, from the largely laissez-faire approach of the United States to the elaborate ‘‘state aid’’ rules of the EU to the intricate but weakly enforced rules of the WTO. Thi…
ABSTRACT How can a prosecutor, who has only limited resources, credibly threaten so many defendants with costly and risky trials and extract plea bargains involving harsh sentences? Had defendants refused to settle, many of them would not have been charged or would have escaped with lenient sanctions. But such collective stonewalling requires coordination among defendants, which is difficu…
ABSTRACT The limited capacity of lawmakers to intuit the unstated wishes of contracting parties constitutes a daunting obstacle to the formulation of majoritarian default rules. This paper presents a field experiment that prices consumers’ unstated understandings of contractual silence regarding warranty and return policies for a good. Used iPods were sold via auction on eBay.com with ra…
ABSTRACT The presence of “peer effects”—that an ideologically homogenous panel decides a case in a more characteristically partisan way than an ideologically diverse panel—is a standard finding in studies of appellate decision-making, but the mechanisms that generate peer effects are not well understood. This article examines a previously overlooked implication that the leading the…
ABSTRACT Japanese patients file relatively few medical malpractice claims. Most scholars try to explain this phenomenon by identifying ‘‘faults’’ in the Japanese judicial system. Largely, the faults they identify do not exist. Instead, a substantial part of the reason for the malpractice claiming patterns may lie in the national health insurance system. In order to contain the cost…
ABSTRACT This paper defends judicial review on the ground that judicial review is necessary for protecting “a right to a hearing.” Judicial review is praised by its advocates on the basis of instrumentalist reasons; i.e., because of its desirable contingent consequences such as protecting rights, promoting democracy, maintaining stability, etc. We argue that instrumentalist justifi cat…
ABSTRACT Why are all soldiers fair game in war? This paper challenges the status-based distinction of the laws of war, calling instead for revised targeting doctrines that would place further limits on the killing of enemy soldiers. I argue that the changing nature of wars and militaries casts doubts on the necessity of killing all enemy combatants indiscriminately. I offer two amendments: The…
ABSTRACT Empirical studies have consistently shown that punitive damages are rarely awarded, with rates of about 3 to 5 percent of plaintiff trial wins. Using the 2005 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Civil Justice Survey, this article shows that knowing in which cases plaintiffs sought punitive damages transforms the picture of punitive damages. Not accounting for whether puniti…
ABSTRACT In international tax policy debate, it is usually assumed that, if one chooses not to exempt residents’ foreign source income, the preferred system would offer foreign tax credits. This assumption is mistaken, given the bad incentives created by the credits’ marginal reimbursement rate (MRR) of 100 percent and the unpersuasiveness of common rationales for granting them, such as th…
ABSTRACT This article argues that a resource held in tenancy in common is likely to be underused and underinvested, and is thus better characterized as anticommons. Nevertheless, tenancy in common does not necessarily create tragedy, as under most legal regimes each co-tenant has a right to petition for partition at any time, and after partition, new owners are likely to utilize the resour…
ABSTRACT The financial crisis has demonstrated serious flaws in the corporate governance of systemically important financial firms. In particular, the norm that managers should seek to maximize shareholder value, as measured by the stock price, proves to be a faulty guide for managerial action in systemically important firms. This is not only because the failure of such firms will have spi…
ABSTRACT Through beat reporting and investigative journalism, reporters monitor the foundational institutions of our society. This reporting has value even to those who never buy a newspaper or read a website. For example, subscribers and nonsubscribers alike benefit when government officials respond to a critical news story by eliminating an abusive practice. Yet unfortunately, the profes…
ABSTRACT Should a strategic Justice assemble a broader coalition for the majority opinion than is necessary, even if that means accommodating changes that move the opinion away from the author’s ideal holding? If the author’s objective is to durably move the law to his or her ideal holding, the conventional answer is no, because there is a cost and no corresponding benefit.Weconsider w…
ABSTRACT Ancient Athens was a remarkably peaceful and well-ordered society by both ancient and contemporary standards. Scholars typically attribute Athens’ success to internalized norms and purely informal enforcement mechanisms. This article argues that the formal Athenian court system played a vital role in maintaining order by enforcing informal norms. This peculiar approach to norm e…
ABSTRACT The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefi t from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have…
ABSTRACT In this article, I define business method inventions and provide an economic framework to address the question of patentability raised in Bilski. A business method invention is the discovery of a commercial technique that firms can apply to address market opportunities. The initial implementation of a business method invention by firms is a Schumpeterian innovation. I advance seve…
ABSTRACT Rights to do grave wrong arise whenever the law permits conduct that ordinary morality severely reproaches. We examine one good reason, ignored by legal thought, why such rights develop: because their undoubted dangers are mitigated by extra-juridical encumbrances on their irresponsible exercise, establishing a normatively acceptable equilibrium. This complex of rights-cum-restrai…
ABSTRACT Most Americans invest through mutual funds. An analysis of laws governing mutual funds shows that U.S. mutual funds are taxed less favorably and regulated more extensively than direct investments or other collective investments, including alternatives available only to the wealthy. The structure of U.S. regulation—of 70-year old proscriptive bright-line rules subject to SEC exem…
ABSTRACT There is a deepening crisis in the funding of legal services in the USA with cut backs in Legal Services Corporation and Interest on Lawyers Trust Account funding, rendering more visible the fact that there is and always will be persistent scarcity in the availability of both criminal and civil legal assistance. This article examines how existing Legal Service Providers (LSPs), bo…
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the connection between ideology and voting of judges using a large sample of court of appeals cases decided since 1925 and Supreme Court cases decided since 1937. The ideological classifications of votes (e.g., liberal or conservative) are dependent variables in our empirical analysis and the independent variables include the party of the appointing President, …
ABSTRACT The emergence of intangible resources, such as intellectual property illuminates a previously unrecognized market failure: what we call a “notice externality.” The incentives of those claiming intellectual property diverge from the social interest. Inventors and creators can sometimes benefit from obfuscating the scope of rights and keeping others in the dark about their intel…
ABSTRACT There has been substantial debate about whether certain forms of universal moral intuitions “exist” —intuitions that are non-reflective and undefended—and, if so, whether these intuitions have a privileged normative status. This debate arguably has implications for jurisprudential debates about the existence of “natural law.” This essay explores the underappreciated ho…
Abstract Many-minds arguments claim that in some way or another, groups of decisionmakers tend to make better decisions than individuals. This essay identifies five general and recurring problems with such arguments, as follows: (1) Whose minds? The group or population whose minds are at issue is often equivocal or ill-defined. (2) Many minds, worse minds. The number of minds endogenously in…
ABSTRACT Economists have documented pervasive correlations between legal origins, modern regulation, and economic outcomes around the world. Where legal origin is exogenous, however, it is almost perfectly correlated with another set of potentially relevant background variables: the colonial policies of the European powers that spread the “origin” legal systems through the world. We at…
Abstract This article proposes a simple and coherent approach to judicial review of class action settlements. Specifically, we propose that for questions going to the adequacy of a settlement, where no warning signals of fraud or collusion are found, the court should act relatively deferentially by employing a lenient standard of scrutiny and approving a settlement if it has a rational bas…
Abstract: Although the concept of soft law has existed for years, scholars have not reached consensus on why states use soft law or even whether “soft law” is a coherent analytic category. In part, this confusion reflects a deep diversity in both the types of international agreements and the strategic situations that produce them. In this paper, we advance four complementary explanations f…
ABSTRACT Registering originative business contracts allows entrepreneurs and creditors to choose, and courts to enforce, market-friendly ‘‘contract’’ rules that protect innocent third parties when adjudicating disputes on subsequent contracts. This reduces information asymmetry for third parties, which enhances impersonal trade. It does so without seriously weakening property right…
ABSTRACT Last year I published an article, “Impossibility, Impracticability, and Frustration,” in this Journal (Eisenberg 2009). Professor Victor Goldberg, a leading fi gure in the law-and-economics of contracts, has now published a counter-article, “ Excuse Doctrine: The Eisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” also in this Journal (Goldberg 2010). Although Goldberg’s article purports …
ABSTRACT Three fundamental concepts underlie the principles that should govern unexpectedcircumstances cases. (1) A contract consists not only of the writing in which it is partly embodied, but also includes, among other things, certain kinds of tacit assumptions. (2) These assumptions may be either event-centered or magnitude-centered. (3) The problems presented by unexpected-circumstance…
ABSTRACT Scholars have distinguished career from recognition judiciaries, largely arguing that they reflect different legal cultures and traditions. We start by noting that the career/recognition distinction does not correspond perfectly to the civil law/common law distinction, but rather that there are pockets of each institutional structure within regimes that are dominated by the other …
ABSTRACT Chrysler, a failing auto manufacturer, was reorganized in a controversial chapter 11 in 2009. Financial creditors were paid a quarter of the amount owed them, while other creditors were paid more. The reorganization’s defenders asserted, among other things, that the proceeding and the sale structure was typical of prior practice. To see if this view fits the evidence, we examine…
ABSTRACT This article asks what the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor stands for. It first shows that the opinion leans in the direction of marriage equality but ultimately resists any dispositive “equality” or “federalism” interpretation. The article next examines why the opinion seems intended to preserve for itself a Delphic obscurity. The article reads …
Abstract When members of deliberating groups speak with one another, their predeliberation tendencies often become exacerbated as their views become more extreme. The resulting phenomenon — group polarization — has been observed in many settings, and it bears on the actions of juries, administrative tribunals, corporate boards, and other institutions. Polarization can result from ratio…
ABSTRACT Exit from contract is one of the most powerful consumer protection devices, freeing consumers from bad deals and keeping businesses honest. Yet consumers often choose transactions with lock-in provisions, trading off exit rights for other perks. This article examines the costs and benefits of free exit, as compared to the lock-in alternative. It argues that present regulation of e…
Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that “The duty to keep a contract at common law means a prediction that you must pay damages if you do not keep it, and nothing else. . . . If you commit a contract, you are liable to pay a compensatory sum unless the promised event comes to pass” (1897, 462). That aphorism has to be qualifi ed by recognizing that in the face of changed circumstances, the perf…
ABSTRACT Using claim-level data, we estimate the effect of Texas’s 2003 cap on noneconomic damages on jury verdicts, post-verdict payouts, and settlements in medical malpractice cases closed during 1988–2004. For pro-plaintiff jury verdicts, the cap affects 47-percent of verdicts and reduces mean allowed non-economic damages, mean allowed verdict, and mean total payout by 73-percent, 3…
Abstract Every western society embraces the ideal of equality before the criminal law. However, as this article observes, that ideal is understood differently in the United States and Continental Europe. American law generally demands that all citizens face an equal threat of punishment, while continental European law generally demands that all citizens face an equal threat of investigatio…
ABSTRACT The maxim ‘‘divide and conquer’’ (divide et impera) is invoked frequently in law, history, and politics, but often in a loose or undertheorized way.We suggest that the maxim is a placeholder for a complex of ideas related by a family resemblance, but differing in their details, mechanisms and implications. We provide an analytic taxonomy of divide and conquer mechanisms in…
ABSTRACT This article compares two policies toward coordinated oligopolistic price elevation. Most commentators endorse the view that the law should (and does) prohibit only those price elevations produced by certain sorts of interfirm communications, such as secret price negotiations. In contrast, little attention has been devoted to a more direct approach that encompasses all coordinated…
ABSTRACT Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. …
ABSTRACT The United States Patent and Trademark Office has acquired a well-deserved reputation for inefficacy and inefficiency. Proposals for reforming the patent office have thus focused on improving the quality of patent review while decreasing its cost. Yet this view overlooks the valuable function performed by the high costs associated with obtaining a patent: these costs serve as an e…
ABSTRACT We analyze a sample of large privately and publicly held businesses that filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions during 2001. We find pervasive creditor control. In contrast to traditional views of Chapter 11, equity holders and managers exercise little or no leverage during the reorganization process. 70 percent of CEOs are replaced in the two years before a bankruptcy filing, and …
ABSTRACT Forming a coalition on a multi-judge panel involves an inherent trade-off between coalition maximization and ideological outcome optimization. Much scholarship is premised on assumptions about how judges make that trade-off; these assumptions have consequences for how we view and measure judicial decision-making. Specifying these assumptions, formally modeling their effects, and b…
Abstract Bonham’s Case (1610) as reported by Sir Edward Coke has often been regarded as an early instance of judicial review of legislation. Lawyers, particularly in the United States, have taken it as a common law precedent for permitting judges to strike down unconstitutional statutes. Using contemporary evidence from English and Continental legal works, this article contends that Bonh…
Abstract The public debate over the need to raise judicial salaries has been one-sided. Sentiment appears to be that judges are underpaid. But neither theory nor evidence provides much support for this view. The primary argument being made in favor of a pay increase is that it will raise the quality of judging. Theory suggests that increasing judicial salaries will improve judicial perform…
ABSTRACT This article proposes a new approach to the 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. We propose the use of cost shifting in the initial process of factual claiming and denials to create incentives for parties to acquire or reveal information germane to the motion to dismiss by forcing them to absorb the costs of either producing the information or denying its existence. Our proposal would ince…
ABSTRACT Suppose that a government party to some treaty regime enacts a measure that authorizes an official to act contrary to the treaty. Suppose further, however, that no action in violation of the treaty has yet occurred. Should beneficiaries of the treaty obligation be allowed to invoke its dispute resolution process to challenge the measure in advance of such a violation? Or should th…
ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss the disparate treatment of perceptual (‘‘fact’’) witnesses and expert witnesses in the legal system. We highlight the distinction between the perceptual act of witnessing and the act of testifying, and argue that although there might be good reasons to regulate payments to fact witnesses, the customary prohibition on paying them for their services is …