Download or read book The Limits of Behavioral Theories of Law and Social Norms written by Robert E. Scott and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The law influences the behavior of its citizens in various ways. Well understood are the direct effects of legal rules. By imposing sanctions or granting subsidies, the law either expands or contracts the horizon of opportunities within which individuals can satisfy their preferences. In this way, society can give incentives for desirable behavior. In recent years, the social norms literature has shown that law can also have indirect effects on incentives. By empowering neighbors and other citizens to use public ridicule as an enforcement technique, these laws can influence behavior by imposing informal sanctions, such as shaming. Similarly, these laws can have self-sanctioning effects to the extent that citizens internalize the legal rule and are deterred by the prospect of guilt. These latter effects require that legal rules be mediated through social phenomena-social norms and human emotions-that are highly complex and only imperfectly understood. In the case of a shaming sanction, the law must rely on existing normative structures to influence in predictable ways the "expression" or social meaning of the disfavored (or favored) action. In the case of self-sanctions, the law must rely on the even more complex phenomenon of internalization of normative behavior. Legal scholars and economists continue to explore the internal mechanisms of social norms and of human emotions and to suggest predictive tools that may be capable of accounting for the influences of legal rules on social norms and individual values. In this essay, I ask the evaluative question: How far have we come? Clearly, as a descriptive matter, we have come a long way. But when it comes to using this more textured understanding of human experience to improve our ability to predict the effects of legal rules, the verdict is far less clear. The danger in such an environment is that the analyst will be guided more by the strength of her a priori beliefs in the relative efficacy of government intervention than in the analytical tools that are deployed. In short, the dilemma remains no different from when it was first identified by Arthur Leff a generation ago. Law and economics, Leff said, "is a desert," and law and society (read: sociology and psychology) "is a swamp." For twenty-five years legal scholars have searched for the holy grail, the fertile middle ground between economics and the other behavioral sciences. The search may be noble and important, but the end of the journey is not yet in sight. The Essay proceeds as follows. In Part I, I set out a contextual case study as an archetypal environment for analyzing the interactions of law and norms. Part II evaluates both the direct and indirect effects of law within this contextual framework using the techniques of rational choice theory. In Part III, I relax the assumption that preferences are exogenous in order to examine, in the same context, the explanatory power of the emerging expressive and internalization theories of law. I conclude, in Part IV, that a preference-shaping analysis provides a richer explanation for commonly observed interactions among legal rules, norms and values, but at a considerable price. The introduction of non-falsifiable hypotheses produces an analysis that is rich in content but also speculative and context-dependent.

Download or read book The Law of Good People written by Yuval Feldman and published by . This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that overcoming people's inability to recognize their own wrongdoing is the most important but regrettably neglected area of the behavioral approach to law.

Download or read book The Limits of Leviathan written by Robert E. Scott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-14 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of international law, like much of contract, is enforced not by independent sanctions but rather through cooperative interaction among the parties, with repeat dealings, reputation, and a preference for reciprocity doing most of the enforcement work. Originally published in 2006, The Limits of Leviathan identifies areas in international law where formal enforcement provides the most promising means of promoting cooperation and where it does not. In particular, it looks at the International Criminal Court, the rules for world trade, efforts to enlist domestic courts to enforce orders of the International Court of Justice, domestic judicial enforcement of the Geneva Convention, the domain of international commercial agreements, and the question of odious debt incurred by sovereigns. This book explains how international law, like contract, depends largely on the willingness of responsible parties to make commitments.

Download or read book Law and Social Norms written by Eric Posner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of law in a society in which order is maintained mostly through social norms, trust, and nonlegal sanctions? Eric Posner argues that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that the law is critical to enhancing good social norms and undermining bad ones. But he also argues that the proper regulation of social norms is a delicate and complex task, and that current understanding of social norms is inadequate for guiding judges and lawmakers. What is needed, and what this book offers, is a model of the relationship between law and social norms. The model shows that people's concern with establishing cooperative relationships leads them to engage in certain kinds of imitative behavior. The resulting behavioral patterns are called social norms. Posner applies the model to several areas of law that involve the regulation of social norms, including laws governing gift-giving and nonprofit organizations; family law; criminal law; laws governing speech, voting, and discrimination; and contract law. Among the engaging questions posed are: Would the legalization of gay marriage harm traditional married couples? Is it beneficial to shame criminals? Why should the law reward those who make charitable contributions? Would people vote more if non-voters were penalized? The author approaches these questions using the tools of game theory, but his arguments are simply stated and make no technical demands on the reader.

Download or read book Handbook of law and economics written by A. Mitchell Polinsky and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2007 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Law can be viewed as a body of rules and legal sanctions that channel behavior in socially desirable directions - for example, by encouraging individuals to take proper precautions to prevent accidents or by discouraging competitors from colluding to raise prices. The incentives created by the legal system are thus a natural subject of study by economists. Moreover, given the importance of law to the welfare of societies, the economic analysis of law merits prominent treatment as a subdiscipline of economics. This two volume Handbook is intended to foster the study of the legal system by economists. The two volumes form a comprehensive and accessible survey of the current state of the field. Chapters prepared by leading specialists of the area. Summarizes received results as well as new developments."--[Source inconnue].

Download or read book Behavioral Law and Economics written by Eyal Zamir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality. While the findings on bounded rationality and heuristics and biases were initially perceived as antithetical to standard economic and legal-economic analysis, over time they have been largely integrated into mainstream economic analysis, including economic analysis of law. Moreover, the impact of behavioral insights has long since transcended purely economic analysis of law: in recent years, the behavioral movement has become one of the most influential developments in legal scholarship in general. Behavioral Law and Economics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the field. Eyal Zamir and Doron Teichman survey the entire body of psychological research that lies at the basis of behavioral analysis of law, and critically evaluate the core methodological questions of this area of research. Following this, the book discusses the fundamental normative questions stemming from the psychological findings on bounded rationality, and explores their implications for setting the law's goals and designing the means to attain them. The book then provides a systematic and critical examination of the contributions of behavioral studies to all major fields of law including: property, contracts, consumer protection, torts, corporate, securities regulation, antitrust, administrative, constitutional, international, criminal, and evidence law, as well as to the behavior of key players in the legal arena: litigants and judicial decision-makers.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Gender and the Law written by Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent is the legal subject gendered? Using illustrative examples from a range of jurisdictions and thematically organised chapters, this volume offers a comprehensive consideration of this question. With a systematic, accessible approach, it argues that law and gender work to co-produce the legal subject. Cumulatively, the volume's chapters provide a systematic evaluation of the key facets of the legal subject: the corporeal, the functional and the communal. Exploring aspects of the legal subject from the ways in which it is sexed and sexualised to its national and familial dimensions, this volume develops a complete account of the various processes through which legal orders produce gendered subjects. Across its chapters, each theoretically ambitious in its own right, this volume outlines how the law not only acts on the social world, but genders it.

Download or read book The Law as a Behavioral Instrument written by Gary B. Melton and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effect of the law on human behavior is contemporary society?nothing less is the concern of this important book. It is curious that scholars in psychology and law have largely neglected this topic because studies of the effects of law on behavior may have much to teach about the role of social regulation in human motivation more generally. Similarly, such studies may offer jurisprudential scholars new ways of thinking about the role of law in human experience.øHere seven leading experts on law and the social sciences discuss the contributions their research c an make to the legal system. Concerned with the relationship between the law and both individual and group behavior, they examine the law as an instrument of social stasis and social change and as an element of personal motivation. The result is a major step toward the development of a psychology of jurisprudence. The scope of this book is in the best tradition of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation and a fitting celebration of the tenth anniversary of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln?s Law/Psychology Program, the first integrated graduate training program in psycho-legal studies. Drawing from law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, the contributors take a truly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the instrumentality of law.

Download or read book Law and Economics written by Aristides N. Hatzis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Law and Economics approach to law dominates the intellectual discussion of nearly every doctrinal area of law in the United States and its influence is growing steadily throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. Numerous academics and practitioners are working in the field with a flow of uninterrupted scholarship that is unprecedented, as is its influence on the law. Academically every major law school in the United States has a Law and Economics program and the emergence of similar programs on other continents continues to accelerate. Despite its phenomenal growth, the area is also the target of an ongoing critique by lawyers, philosophers, psychologists, social scientists, even economists since the late 1970s. While the critique did not seem to impede the development of the field, it certainly has helped it to become more sophisticated, inclusive, and mature. In this volume some of the leading scholars working in the field, as well as a number of those critical of Law and Economics, discuss the foundational issues from various perspectives: philosophical, moral, epistemological, methodological, psychological, political, legal, and social. The philosophical and methodological assumptions of the economic analysis of law are criticized and defended, alternatives are proposed, old and new applications are discussed. The book is ideal for a main or supplementary textbook in courses and seminars on legal theory, philosophy of law, jurisprudence, and (of course) Law and Economics.

Download or read book Failure to Flourish written by Clare Huntington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the connection between families and inequality, Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships argues that the legal regulation of families stands fundamentally at odds with the needs of families. Strong, stable, positive relationships are essential for both individuals and society to flourish, but from transportation policy to the criminal justice system, and from divorce rules to the child welfare system, the legal system makes it harder for parents to provide children with these kinds of relationships, exacerbating the growing inequality in America. Failure to Flourish contends that we must re-orient the legal system to help families avoid crises and, when conflicts arise, intervene in a manner that heals relationships. To understand how wrong our family law system has gone and what we need to repair it, Failure to Flourish takes us from ancient Greece to cutting-edge psychological research, and from the chaotic corridors of local family courts to a quiet revolution under way in how services are provided to families in need. Incorporating the latest insights of positive psychology and social science research, the book sets forth a new, more emotionally intelligent vision for a legal system that not only resolves conflict but actively encourages the healthy relationships that are at the core of a stable society.

Download or read book The Laws and Economics of Confucianism written by Taisu Zhang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zhang argues that property institutions in preindustrial China and England were a cause of China's lagging development in preindustrial times.

Download or read book Symbolic Legislation Theory and Developments in Biolaw written by Bart van Klink and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume covers new ground by bringing together perspectives from symbolic legislation theory on the one hand, and from biolaw and bioethics on the other hand. Symbolic legislation has a bad name. It usually refers to instances of legislation which are ineffective and that serve other political and social goals than the goals officially stated. Recently, a more positive notion of symbolic legislation has emerged in legislative theory. From this perspective, symbolic legislation is regarded as a positive alternative to the more traditional, top-down legislative approach. The legislature no longer merely issues commands backed up with severe sanctions, as in instrumental legislation. Instead, lawmakers provide open and aspirational norms that are meant to change behavior not by means of threat, but indirectly, through debate and social interaction. Since the 1990s, biomedical developments have revived discussions on symbolic legislation. One of the reasons is that biomedical legislation touches on deep-rooted, symbolic-cultural representations of the biological aspects of human life. Moreover, as it is often impossible to reach consensus on these controversial questions, legislators have sought alternative ways to develop legal frameworks. Consequently, communicative and interactive approaches to legislation are prominent within the governance of medical biotechnology. The symbolic dimensions of biolaw are often overlooked. Yet, it is clear that the symbolic is at the heart of many legal-political debates on bioethical questions. Since the rise of biomedical technologies, human body materials have acquired a scientific, medical and even commercial value. These new approaches, which radically question existing legal symbolizations of the human body, raise the question whether and how the law should continue to reflect symbolic values and meanings. Moreover, how can we decide what these symbolic values are, given the fact that we live in a pluralistic society?

Download or read book Fidelity Constraint written by Lawrence Lessig and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-03 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fundamental fact about our Constitution is that it is old -- the oldest written constitution in the world. The fundamental challenge for interpreters of the Constitution is how to read that old document over time. In Fidelity & Constraint, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig explains that one of the most basic approaches to interpreting the constitution is the process of translation. Indeed, some of the most significant shifts in constitutional doctrine are products of the evolution of the translation process over time. In every new era, judges understand their translations as instances of "interpretive fidelity," framed within each new temporal context. Yet, as Lessig also argues, there is a repeatedly occurring countermove that upends the process of translation. Throughout American history, there has been a second fidelity in addition to interpretive fidelity: what Lessig calls "fidelity to role." In each of the cycles of translation that he describes, the role of the judge -- the ultimate translator -- has evolved too. Old ways of interpreting the text now become illegitimate because they do not match up with the judge's perceived role. And when that conflict occurs, the practice of judges within our tradition has been to follow the guidance of a fidelity to role. Ultimately, Lessig not only shows us how important the concept of translation is to constitutional interpretation, but also exposes the institutional limits on this practice. The first work of both constitutional and foundational theory by one of America's leading legal minds, Fidelity & Constraint maps strategies that both help judges understand the fundamental conflict at the heart of interpretation whenever it arises and work around the limits it inevitably creates.

Download or read book Paradoxes and Inconsistencies in the Law written by Oren Perez and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-13 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is law paradoxical? This book seeks to unravel the riddle of legal paradoxes. It focuses on two main questions: the nature of legal paradoxes, and their social ramifications. In exploring the structure of legal paradoxes, the book focuses both on generic paradoxes, such as those associated with the self-referential character of legal validity and the endemic incoherence of legal discourse, and on paradoxes that permeate more restricted fields of law, such as contract law, euthanasia, and human rights (the prohibition of torture). The discussion of the social effects of legal paradoxes focuses on the role of paradoxes as drivers of legal change, and explores the institutional mechanisms that ensure the stability of the law, in spite of its paradoxical makeup. The essays in the book discuss these questions from various perspectives, invoking insights from philosophy, systems theory, deconstruction and economics.

Download or read book The Right to Do Wrong written by Mark Osiel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common morality—in the form of shame, outrage, and stigma—has always been society’s first line of defense against ethical transgressions. Social mores crucially complement the law, Mark Osiel shows, sparing us from oppressive formal regulation. Much of what we could do, we shouldn’t—and we don’t. We have a free-speech right to be offensive, but we know we will face outrage in response. We may declare bankruptcy, but not without stigma. Moral norms constantly demand more of us than the law requires, sustaining promises we can legally break and preventing disrespectful behavior the law allows. Mark Osiel takes up this curious interplay between lenient law and restrictive morality, showing that law permits much wrongdoing because we assume that rights are paired with informal but enforceable duties. People will exercise their rights responsibly or else face social shaming. For the most part, this system has worked. Social order persists despite ample opportunity for reprehensible conduct, testifying to the decisive constraints common morality imposes on the way we exercise our legal prerogatives. The Right to Do Wrong collects vivid case studies and social scientific research to explore how resistance to the exercise of rights picks up where law leaves off and shapes the legal system in turn. Building on recent evidence that declining social trust leads to increasing reliance on law, Osiel contends that as social changes produce stronger assertions of individual rights, it becomes more difficult to depend on informal tempering of our unfettered freedoms. Social norms can be indefensible, Osiel recognizes. But the alternative—more repressive law—is often far worse. This empirically informed study leaves little doubt that robust forms of common morality persist and are essential to the vitality of liberal societies.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and the Law written by Eyal Zamir and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 841 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and Law' brings together leading scholars of law, psychology, and economics to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of this field of research, including its strengths and limitations as well as a forecast of its future development. Its twenty-nine chapters are organized into four parts.

Download or read book Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay written by Jean Braucher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the papers prepared for a conference held at the Wisconsin Law School in 2011 to honour the work of Stewart Macaulay, one of the most famous contracts scholars of his generation. Macaulay has been writing about contracts and contract law for over 50 years; the 1960s were particularly productive years for him, when he introduced many novel ideas into the scholarly world. Macaulay's foundational work for what is now called relational contract theory was published during this period. Macaulay is also known for his use of empirical research and interdisciplinary theories to illuminate our knowledge of contracting practices. The papers in this volume reflect, in diverse ways, on the subsequent influence and the contemporary relevance of Macaulay's work. All the contributors are important contracts scholars in their own right: David Campbell and John Wightman from the UK, Brian Bix, Jay Feinman, Robert Gordon, Claire Hill, Charles Knapp, Ethan Leib, Deborah Post, Edward Rubin, Carol Sanger, Robert Scott, Gordon Smith, Josh Whitford (with Li-Wen Lin) and William Woodward from the USA. The volume also reproduces Macaulay's most cited paper, 'Non-Contractual Relations in Business', and excerpts from two other important papers of his, 'Private Legislation and the Duty to Read-Business Run by IBM Machine, the Law of Contracts and Credit Cards', and 'The Real and The Paper Deal: Empirical Pictures of Relationships, Complexity and the Urge for Transparent Simple Rules'.