University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series最新文献

{"title":"In Praise of Pedantic Eclecticism: Pitfalls and Opportunities in the Psychology of Judging","authors":"Dan Simon","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367584.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367584.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This Chapter was written for a collection of essays about the psychology of judging. The Chapter examines some methodological aspects related to experimentation of judging. In particular, it addresses the prevailing concern with external validity. Two central points will be made here. First, it is important to acknowledge that all types of validity are intricately intertwined. Attempting to fix one aspect of validity can be overwhelmed by greater compromises in other aspects. For example, a proposal by Fred Schauer to compare the performance of judges to lay people in complex judicial decision making tasks stands to suffer from low construct validity, thus leading to uninterpretable results. To maximize validity, one needs to be pedantic about the design of the entire study. At the same time, the concern with external validity should not be exaggerated. The discrepancy between the experimental environment and real world settings does not automatically bar all applications of findings from the former to the latter. It does, however, require a cautious application and oftentimes a lot of data. When experimental findings do meet the rigorous demands of external validity and context-attentiveness, they can be applied to real world domains, including specialized ones. This possibility opens up the field of judging to a range of methodological approaches and thus offers the benefit of insights originating from diverse scientific perspectives. To demonstrate the possibilities in this regard, the discussion will center on the application of a particular body of research - coherence based reasoning - to judging.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131852865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Levers of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants of the Quality of Law","authors":"Gillian K. Hadfield","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.988800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.988800","url":null,"abstract":"In the past decade a comparative law and economics literature has emerged that is largely organized around an effort to explain differences in country economic performance in terms of differences between common law and civil code systems. Assumptions about differences between common law and civil code regimes and the correspondence between legal regimes and judicial behavior are, however, still only weakly based in real institutional features of modern legal systems. In this paper, I examine the institutional determinants of the quality of law developed by a legal regime, drawing on a model from Hadfield which identifies five key parameters that influence legal evolution [Hadfield, G.K., 2007a. The quality of law: Judicial incentives, legal human capital and the evolution of law. Manuscript. Available at http://works.bepress.com/ghadfield]. I set out the institutional features that determine these parameters as dimensions along which real legal systems reside. These dimensions include: the organization of the judiciary and the extent to which judicial careers are organized on a bureaucratic career model or what I call a \"capstone\" model; the organization of the courts and the extent to which jurisdiction is general or specific; the mechanisms of information distribution and the extent to which information is distributed to a broad public audience or a more confined professional audience; the role of judges, whether active or passive, in finding facts and shaping the issues in adjudication; the role of public versus private entities in the enforcement of judgments (damages); and the degree to which the mechanisms by which legal services are produced, priced and distributed are competitive or professionally-controlled. My claim is that these key institutional dimensions, rather than conventional and more abstract distinctions based on the sources of law or judicial independence should be the primary focus of empirical efforts to evaluate and policy efforts to reform legal regimes. They are the levers of legal design. Journal of Comparative Economics 36 (1) (2008) 43-73.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"66 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131922490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Don't Leave Home Without it: Limited Liability and American Express","authors":"Mark I. Weinstein","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.665741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.665741","url":null,"abstract":"What is the value of limited liability to the corporation? Financial economists take the value of limited liability for granted and there has been little empirical study of its value. Few natural experiments allow us to estimate the value of limited liability. One of these, however, is the case of American Express Company. It appears that American Express was the last publicly traded unlimited liability firm in the United States, becoming a corporation with limited liability only in 1965. In this paper, I examine the effects of adopting limited liability on the value of American Express shares, and on their risk. Consistent with economic theory and previous empirical research [Weinstein (2003)], I find little effect on firm value, and a reduction in both systematic and unsystematic risk. This paper also contributes to the empirical methodology of event studies.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126206775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Legal Infrastructure, Judicial Independence, and Economic Development","authors":"Daniel Klerman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.877490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.877490","url":null,"abstract":"Economic theory generally supports the idea that judicial independence, and, more generally, high quality courts, facilitate economic growth. Good, independent courts enforce contracts and protect property, and by doing so encourage the investment which is crucial for economic development. Nevertheless, judicial independence and good courts are not necessary to investment, because there are other mechanisms which can enforce contracts and protect property, albeit perhaps not as well as courts. Contracts can be enforced by reputation, without recourse to the courts. Similarly, the government can protect property through executive restraint and policing, even if constitutional protections are weak and private litigation is ineffective. Thus, economic growth often starts without strong courts, and efforts to improve the quality of the judiciary are often the consequence, not the cause, of economic development.The empirical literature, to the extent that it has investigated the relationship between courts and economic growth, has focused on judicial independence. Judicial independence is, of course, only one aspect of quality courts. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to measure and probably correlated with other indices of court quality. It thus serves as a rough proxy for the quality of legal infrastructure. There is some evidence that judicial independence is associated with economic growth, but the evidence is mixed and causation is unclear.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121606661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trademark Dilution, Search Costs, and Naked Licensing","authors":"Daniel Klerman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.870089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.870089","url":null,"abstract":"Trademark dilution needs to be rethought to ensure that it enhances social welfare. Blurring should only be considered harmful when it increases consumer search costs. The fact that a trademark calls to mind two different products should not itself be considered actionable. Blurring only causes real harm when it interferes with consumers' ability to remember brand attributes. The Coase Theorem suggests that anti-dilution statutes will not block beneficial, non-competing uses of a mark, because, if transactions costs are low and the use is socially beneficial, the trademark owner will license the use. Unfortunately, the \"naked licensing\" rule, which forbids unsupervised licenses, adds unnecessary transactions costs and blocks potentially beneficial uses. Some commentators think free riding is or should be the essence of dilution. If free riding causes no harm - no consumer confusion, no blurring, and no tarnishment - then it is socially beneficial and should be allowed.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124111094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Regulation of Superstores: The Legality of Zoning Ordinances Emerging from the Skirmishes between Wal-Mart and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union","authors":"George Lefcoe","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.712801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.712801","url":null,"abstract":"Having saturated the less populated heartland of America, Wal-Mart is carrying its supercenter expansion program to major urban areas. Wal-Mart supercenters merge discount retail with full service grocery stores under the same roof. Because supercenters compete head-on with unionized supermarkets, they place downward pressure on grocery worker wages. The United Food and Commercial Workers, the largest representative of grocery workers, has joined other Wal-Mart critics at city halls across the country in using zoning laws to restrain Wal-Mart's supercenter expansion program. A smattering of lawsuits has ensued, and more are sure to follow. This paper describes the types of anti-superstore zoning ordinances favored by the UFCW, and the legal objections Wal-Mart can expect to be raised against them. At the top of the legal checklist are equal protection, pre-emption by the National Labor Relations Act, and prohibitions against the use of zoning to regulate economic competition. Anticipating these objections, the UFCW and its allies can make a public record sufficient to insulate virtually any anti-superstore ordinance from being invalidated in court. But this cannot be accomplished easily or inexpensively, because enacting jurisdictions wanting to avoid remand will need to commission studies to fit the claimed rationales for these laws. Market impact assessments sensitive to the local trade area will almost always be required, and in a handful of states, including New York and California, so will environmental impact reports. If the UFCW and their grocery chain allies find the zoning effort too costly and cumbersome, they may wish to consider extending \"living wage\" controls to grocery workers, a move more likely to be resisted in the political arena than blocked by courts.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115579981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Have Voter Initiatives Paralyzed the California Budget?","authors":"J. Matsusaka","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.476443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.476443","url":null,"abstract":"Many observers blame the California budget crisis on a series of voter initiatives that unrealistically appropriated spending while prohibiting tax increases. However, a review of all initiative measures approved by the voters since 1912 shows that no more than 32 percent of appropriations in the 2003-04 budget were locked in by initiatives. Virtually all of the earmarked spending was for education, and would have been appropriated by the legislature even without an initiative mandate. Initiatives placed only minimal constraints on the legislature's ability to raise revenue. The facts suggest that voter initiatives are not a significant obstacle to balancing the budget in California.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130314891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Redux of Cognitive Consistency Theories: Evidence Judgments by Constraint Satisfaction","authors":"Dan Simon, C. Snow, S. Read","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.439984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.439984","url":null,"abstract":"We suggest that making decisions from multiple pieces of evidence is performed by mechanisms of constraint satisfaction. Such reasoning is bi-directional - decisions follow from the evidence, but evaluations of the evidence shift towards coherence with the emerging decision. Using a factually complex legal case, we found that patterns of coherence shifts remained constant even when the distribution of decisions was manipulated by changes in the strength of the evidence (Study 1) and standard of proof (Study 2). Similar shifts were found across participants with different attitudes (Study 3). When participants changed their preferred decision, the evaluation of the facts dovetailed with the new preference (Study 4). Supporting the bi-directionality of reasoning, Study 5 showed that assigning participants to a verdict strongly affected their evaluation of the evidence. Coherence mechanisms also influenced evaluations of related background knowledge. Implications for algebraic models of judgment (Bayes Theorem and Information Integration Theory) and for the Story Model (Pennington & Hastie, 1986) are discussed. This research argues that Cognitive Consistency Theories should play a greater role in the understanding of human cognition.","PeriodicalId":415853,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Legal Studies Research Paper Series","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114349710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}