Pragmatic Adjudication
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Efficiency, Utility, and Wealth Maximization Jules L
Hofstra Law Review Volume 8 | Issue 3 Article 3 1980 Efficiency, Utility, and Wealth Maximization Jules L. Coleman Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr Recommended Citation Coleman, Jules L. (1980) "Efficiency, Utility, and Wealth Maximization," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 8: Iss. 3, Article 3. Available at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol8/iss3/3 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hofstra Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Coleman: Efficiency, Utility, and Wealth Maximization EFFICIENCY, UTILITY, AND WEALTH MAXIMIZATION Jules L. Coleman* CONTENTS I. EFFICIENCY AND UTILITY ......................... 512 A. The Pareto Criteria ............................ 512 B. Kaldor-Hicks ........................... 513 C. The Pareto Standards and Utilitarianism ......... 515 1. Pareto Superiority ......................... 515 2. Pareto Optimality ......................... 517 D. Kaldor-Hicks and Utility ....................... 518 II. THE CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF WEALTH MAXIMIZATION . 520 A. Wealth and Efficiency ......................... 521 B. Consequences of the Reliance of Wealth on Prices . 523 1. Exchange ................................ 523 2. Scarcity .................................. 524 3. Theoretical Incompleteness ................. 524 4. Assigning Basic Entitlements ............... 524 5. Circularity -
What Is Obviously Wrong with the Federal Judiciary, Yet Eminently Curable Part I
WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY WRONG WITH THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY, YET EMINENTLY CURABLE PART I Richard A. Posner† REALIZE I’VE GOTTEN a not entirely welcome – though not entirely undeserved – reputation as a maverick, naysayer, scoffer, gadfly, faultfinder – in short a committed candid critic of the American legal system,1 and in particular of the federal judiciary, the branch of the Isystem that I know best, having been a federal court of appeals judge for the past 34 years, and that I hammer most frequently. My just-published book Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary (2016) will cement that reputation. What is odd is that most of the criticism I receive is of my writings or speeches about the judicial process, as exemplified by this article. Criticisms of my judicial opinions are rare, even though I have written more than 3100 published opinions in my 34 years as a federal appellate judge. And such criticisms as the opinions do receive differ in tone and content from the † Richard Posner is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. 1 See, e.g., Lincoln Caplan, “Rhetoric and Law: How the productive, contentious, prodigious Richard A. Posner became one of America’s most influential judges,” Harvard Magazine, Feb. 2016, p. 49, www.harvardmagazine.com. 19 GREEN BAG 2D 187 Richard A. Posner criticisms of my extrajudicial comments on the judicial process. Criticisms of my opinions tend to focus on my citing Internet websites in them. In the present article, however, and its sequel (Part II, to be published in the next issue of this journal), I try to retreat some distance from controver- sy by confining my discussion to those features of the federal judicial process that are at once demonstrably unsound and readily corrigible without need for federal legislation or radical changes in legal doctrines or practices. -
Rights As Signals
RIGHTS AS SIGNALS DANIEL A. FARBER* ABSTRACT Because rights operate as trumps over normal governmental interests, they have an inherent cost. Consequently, by entrenching protection for human rights, govern- ments can signal a willingness to give up power in the short term to obtain long- term benefits. Investors can infer from this that the government has a low discount rate and is less likely to pose a threat of expropriation. Similarly, when courts vig- orously enforce human rights, they dramatize their judicial independence, which is valuable to investors, who themselves may have no interest in human rights. Thus, human rights enforcement may help encourage investment and thereby indirectly foster economic growth. I. INTRODUCTION CAN developing countries afford human rights and the rule of law? Perhaps not, according to Richard Posner. Posner advises poorer countries against "creating a first-class judiciary or an extensive system of civil liberties."' Although he is by no means opposed to judicial independence and human rights, he argues that they should largely await economic growth.2 From this point of view, the dramatic recent expansion of constitutionalism is a bit perplexing, if not a mistake. Posner's argument can be challenged on several grounds. Although he minimizes the importance of an independent judiciary to development,' the current consensus among economists is apparently to the contrary.' Some * McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law, Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law, and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, University of Minnesota. Thanks to Jim Chen, David McGowan, Eric Posner, and Tom Ulen for helpful comments. 'Richard A. Posner, Creating a Legal Framework for Economic Development, 13 World Bank Research Observer 1, 9 (1998). -
Four Conceptualizations of the Relations of Law to Economics (Tribulations of a Positivist Social Science)
University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2012 Four Conceptualizations of the Relations of Law to Economics (Tribulations of a Positivist Social Science) Pierre Schlag University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Law and Economics Commons Citation Information Pierre Schlag, Four Conceptualizations of the Relations of Law to Economics (Tribulations of a Positivist Social Science), 33 CARDOZO L. REV. 2357 (2012), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/ 115. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 33 Cardozo L. Rev. 2357 2011-2012 Provided by: William A. Wise Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Tue Feb 28 10:26:43 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information FOUR CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE RELATIONS OF LAW TO ECONOMICS (TRIBULATIONS OF A POSITIVIST SOCIAL SCIENCE) PierreSchlag* TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRO DU CTIO N ............................................................................................................. -
Valuing Modern Contract Scholarship
Responses Valuing Modern Contract Scholarship Ian Ayrest I. INTRODUCTION Eric Posner has written a thoughtful and provocative indictment of the modem economic analysis of contracts. His essay makes two central claims1 about the failings of scholars "to produce an 'economic theory.' Specifically, Posner claims that the economic approach "does not explain the current system of contract law" and that it does not "provide a solid basis for criticizing and reforming contract law."2 In other words, Posner claims that modem scholarship fails as either a descriptive or a normative theory, in that it fails to give an account of what current law is or what efficient law should be. The descriptive criticism deserves only brief comment. Although he claims that modem scholarship has failed to achieve "what its proponents set out as the measure of success, ' 3 Posner sadly distorts reality by claiming that the leading scholars have been engaged in an attempt to use economic theory to predict the content of current legal rules. This is a straw man. Of course, decades ago this was the project of Richard Posner. 4 But the thought that efficiency analysis would provide a mechanism to predict the details of current doctrine is a serious misreading of the aims of modem scholarship. t William K. Townsend Professor, Yale Law School, [email protected]. Alan Schwartz provided helpful comments. 1. Eric A. Posner, Economic Analysis of Contract Law After Three Decades: Success or Failure?,112 YALE L.J. 829, 830 (2003). 2. Id. 3. Id.at 879; see also id, at 831 ("[Tjhe original aspiration[] of the economic analysis of contract law [was] to provide an explanation of existing legal rules ...."). -
Heinonline (PDF)
+(,1 2 1/,1( Citation: Frederick Schauer, Fuller's Fairness: The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, 35 U. Queensland L.J. 11, 20 (2016) Provided by: University of Virginia Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Wed Sep 20 14:34:49 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information Use QR Code reader to send PDF to your smartphone or tablet device FULLER'S FAIRNESS: 'THE CASE OF THE SPELUNCEAN EXPLORERS' FREDERICK SCHAUER* There is much to appreciate in Lon Fuller's 'The Case of the Speluncean Explorers' published in the Harvard Law Review in 1949.' The article offers still- valuable insights into the various connections between law and morality. It is also an important contribution to the topic now commonly discussed under the rubric of legal defeasibility. 2 In addition, it remains a timely contribution to knotty questions about statutory interpretation. And all of this is written with a marvelous combination of charm and brio, even apart from the virtues of a law review article with no footnotes whatsoever. All of these positive features of Fuller's masterpiece are worthy of comment, but perhaps most deserving of attention, and most often overlooked, is the way in which Fuller presents strong and sympathetic arguments for a host of mutually exclusive positions, all of which, save one, are positions that Fuller himself, in other writings, in fact rejects. -
THE INFLUENCE of Two DECADES of CONTRACT LAW SCHOLARSHIP on JUDICIAL RULINGS: an EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
SMU Law Review Volume 57 Issue 1 Article 5 2004 The Influence of woT Decades of Contract Law Scholarship on Judicial Rulings: An Empirical Analysis Gregory S. Crespi Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Gregory S. Crespi, The Influence of woT Decades of Contract Law Scholarship on Judicial Rulings: An Empirical Analysis, 57 SMU L. REV. 105 (2004) https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol57/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in SMU Law Review by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. THE INFLUENCE OF Two DECADES OF CONTRACT LAW SCHOLARSHIP ON JUDICIAL RULINGS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS Gregory Scott Crespi* I. INTRODUCTION VER the last two decades, a substantial and diverse body of con- tract law scholarship has been produced. Some of this work lim- its itself to applying traditional doctrinal categories and analytical approaches to new problems, while some also engages in eco- nomic analysis of various legal regimes, and some is empirical as well as analytical in nature. Much of this work is of a rather theoretical and ab- stract character. Consequently, one wonders whether this literature has had any discernable impact upon judicial practice, particularly in light of the declarations made by both prominent jurists and leading practitioners that most current legal scholarship has very limited relevance for attor- neys and judges,' and given recent studies that suggest declining rates of 2 citation of law review articles in judicial opinions. -
LEAVING CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW WHERE IT Is: GOLDSMITH and POSNER's the LIMITS of INTERNATIONAL LAW
LEAVING CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW WHERE IT Is: GOLDSMITH AND POSNER'S THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW David M. Golove* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ......................................... 334 II. THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................ 336 A. Self-Interested States? ................................ 337 B. The Supposed Weakness of Customary InternationalLaw ..... 343 Im. EMPIRICAL METHODOLOGY: GOLDSMITH AND POSNER' S APPROACH TO HISTORY ....................................347 IV. CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE CIVIL WAR ........ 350 V. CONCLUSION ........................................... 377 * The Hiller Family Foundation Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. For helpful comments, the author is indebted to Eyal Benvenisti, John Ferejohn, Thomas Franck, Barry Friedman, Clay Gillette, Dan Hulsebosch, Stephen Holmes, Lewis Kornhauser, Mattias Kumm, Daryl Levinson, Susan Lewis, Rick Pildes, and all of the participants in the symposium. This Essay was presented at a symposium on The Limits of InternationalLaw, University of Georgia Law School, October 28-29, 2005. GA. J. INT'L & COMP. L. [Vol. 34:333 I. INTRODUCrION International legal scholarship has long suffered from too much normative theorizing and too little positive analysis about how the international legal system actually works. This inattention to the empirical and descriptive has alienated international legal scholars from their colleagues in political science departments and lent much of international law scholarship an utopian air. Whatever the historical source of this state of affairs, however, it is rapidly fading. A new generation of scholars, steeped in a variety of social scientific methodologies, has turned its sights on international law and is actively employing positive theories of state behavior to enhance legal analyses. These scholars have also begun to undertake empirical studies in an effort to provide support for their theoretical claims. -
Economic Analysis of Contract Law After Three Decades: Success Or Failure? Eric A
University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Economics 2002 Economic Analysis of Contract Law after Three Decades: Success or Failure? Eric A. Posner Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Eric Posner, "Economic Analysis of Contract Law after Three Decades: Success or Failure?" (John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No. 146, 2002). This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHICAGO JOHN M. OLIN LAW & ECONOMICS WORKING PAPER NO. 146 (2D SERIES) Economic Analysis of Contract Law after Three Decades: Success or Failure? Eric A. Posner THE LAW SCHOOL THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO This paper can be downloaded without charge at: The Chicago Working Paper Series Index: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/Lawecon/index.html The Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=304977 Economic Analysis of Contract Law After Three Decades: Success or Failure? Eric A. Posner1 Abstract: Law and economics has failed to produce plausible descriptive theories of contract doctrines. This paper documents these failures and suggests that they are due to a methodological problem involving the concept of transaction costs. If transaction costs refer to writing or information costs, then rational individuals would agree to complex contracts that are not in fact observed, and contract law would, for the most part, have no other function than that of specifically enforcing contracts. -
The Material Basis of Jurisprudencet
The Material Basis of Jurisprudencet RICHARD A. POSNER' This paper juxtaposes, I hope in a mutually illuminating rather than merely paradoxical manner, two bodies of theory not often discussed in the same breath: cartel theory, and jurisprudence. My aim is, with the aid of economics, to cast new light on fundamental issues concerning the legal profession and professional ideology. I. THE ARGUMENT IN BRIEF Human beings are bright but selfish animals. Selfishness is as characteristic of lawyers as it is of other people, although lawyers are brighter on average than the population as a whole. So we should not be surprised that the history of the legal profession is to a great extent, and despite noisy and incessant protestation and apologetics, the history of efforts by all branches of the legal profession, including the professoriate and the judiciary, to secure a lustrous place in the financial and social status sun. And until sometime in the 1960's, the legal profession in the United States, as in most other wealthy countries, was succeeding triumphantly in this endeavor. The profession was an intricately and ingeniously reticulated, though imperfect, cartel. Governmental regulations designed to secure the cartel against competition and new entry from without, and centrifugal, disintegrative competitive pressures from within, held the cartel together against the dangers that beset and ordinarily would destroy a cartel of many members. The organization of the profession as a cartel produced, as a by-product, a certain view of "law"-the view of law as an objective, existent, enigmatic, but ultimately knowable entity constraining the behavior of lawyers and judges and thereby justifying the autonomy of the profession from political or market controls. -
Book Review Rationalism and Revisionism in International Law
BOOK REVIEW RATIONALISM AND REVISIONISM IN INTERNATIONAL LAW THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. By Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. Pp. 262. $29.95. Reviewed by Oona A. Hathaway*and Ariel N. Lavinbuk** INTRODUCTION International law has moved from the periphery to the center of public debate in the course of only a few short years. The ever- quickening globalization of politics, culture, and economics has prompted new efforts to find global solutions to global problems. In- ternational law now touches an astonishing array of activities. It gov- erns everything from the goods and services that cross state borders and the greenhouse gases that industries and consumers produce, to the circumstances that justify intervention in humanitarian disasters and the treatment afforded suspected terrorists. Of increasingly urgent concern, then, is whether all of this law actually makes much of a difference. Legal scholars have traditionally argued that it does. They have, for the most part, portrayed international law as a powerful and much-needed external limit on states' pursuit of their own short-term interests. Over the last half decade, however, Professors Jack Gold- smith and Eric Posner have aspired to revolutionize policymaking and scholarship by arguing precisely the opposite - an argument now pre- sented fully in The Limits of InternationalLaw. In their view, interna- tional law does not check self-interest but instead "emerges from states acting rationally to maximize their interests, given their perceptions of the interests of other states and the distribution of state power" (p. 3). * Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Carnegie Scholar 2004. -
Judicial Independence in International Tribunals
University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 2005 Judicial Independence in International Tribunals Eric A. Posner John C. Yoo Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Eric Posner & John C. Yoo, "Judicial Independence in International Tribunals," 93 California Law Review 1 (2005). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. California Law Review VOL. 93 JANUARY 2005 No. 1 Copyright © 2005 by California Law Review, Inc. Judicial Independence in International Tribunals Eric A. Posnert and John C. Yoot TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................. 3 I. Background on International Dispute Resolution ............................ 8 II. Independence and the Role of International Tribunals ..................... 12 A. Independence in the Domestic and International Spheres ....... 12 B. Why States Use International Tribunals ..................................... 14 1. Information Disclosure in Treaty Disputes ........................... 15 2. Information Disclosure in Customary International Law D isputes ............................................................................. 18 3. The Dispute Resolution Mechanism