The Refund Booth: Using the Principle of Symmetric Information to Improve Campaign Finance Regulation

On March 22, 2006, Professor of Law, Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s twenty-sixth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: The Refund Booth: Using the Principle of Symmetric Information to Improve Campaign Finance Regulation. The article, The Secret Refund Booth, was co-authored with Professor Bruce Ackerman of Yale University. Ian Ayres is a lawyer and an economist. He is the William K. Townsend Professor of Law and Anne Urowsky Professorial Fellow in Law at Yale Law School and a Professor at Yale\u27s School of Management. He is the editor of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. Professor Ayres is a regular commentator on public radio’s Marketplace and a columnist for Forbes magazine and regularly writes opeds for The New York Times. He received his B.A. (majoring in Russian studies and economics) and J.D. from Yale and his Ph.D in economics from M.I.T. Professor Ayres clerked for the Honorable James K. Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has previously taught at Illinois, Northwestern, Stanford, and Virginia law schools and has been a research fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Professor Ayres has published eight books and over 100 articles on a wide range of topics

Interpretation and Construction in Altering Rules

This essay is a response to Ian Ayres\u27s, Regulating Opt-Out: An Economic Theory of Altering Rules, 121 Yale L.J. 2032 (2012). Ayres identifies an important question: How does the law decide when parties have opted-out of a contractual default? Unfortunately, his article tells only half of the story about such altering rules. Ayres cares about rules designed to instruct parties on how to get the terms that they want. By focusing on such rules he ignores altering rules designed instead to interpret the nonlegal meaning of the parties\u27 acts or agreement. This limited vision is characteristic of economic approaches to contract law. Valuable as they are for identifying the incentives, intended or unintended, that legal rules create, they tend to overlook other functions of contract law. The essay develops these points by applying the interpretation-construction distinction to Ayres\u27s theory. It distinguishes between two categories of altering rules, juristic and hermeneutic. Juristic altering rules are designed to help parties get the legal outcomes they want, though as Ayres points out, such rules also might attempt to slow parties with extra transaction costs. Hermeneutic altering rules condition legal change on the nonlegal meanings of what the parties say and do. Their application therefore requires a broader form of interpretation. The essay identifies the connections between each type of rule and more general principles and purposes of contract law. And it argues that attention to hermeneutic altering rules can fill in some of the gaps in Ayres\u27s account, such as explaining why juristic altering rules often specify sufficient but non-necessary means of effecting a legal change

Dr. Ayres, Assistant Director of Honors and Fulbright Scholar

Dr. Ayres learned about Brazil while on a Fulbright with fourteen other professors in 2002

Brazil’s Broken Cross

When Dr. Ayres was in Brazil in 2002 on a Fulbright, she learned a lot about the religions in Brazil. This article is about that educational experience

Recovering a Forgotten Pioneer of Science Studies: C. E. Ayres’ Deweyan Critique of Science and Technology

This paper brings to light the ideas of a pioneering but largely forgotten social critic, C. E. Ayres. In his first book, Science: The False Messiah (1927), which was written in consultation with John Dewey, Ayres advanced a forceful and original critique of science and technology. He argued that technological change was occurring at a pace that had overwhelmed existing social institutions, and further claimed that efforts to solve the problem by educating citizens about science and technology would prove fruitless. The analysis presented in this paper outlines Ayres’ key arguments, examines the mutual influences between Dewey and Ayres, and makes a case that many of Ayres’ innovative arguments remain surprisingly relevant today

Ted Ayres, Social Justice and Education Advocate: Making it Count with Book Reviews

This is an interview article with a prolific reviewer of books seen on public television and in print. Ted Ayres had an inspired legal career, and his advocacy continues to this day. The year 2020, like no other year in our recent U.S. history, was a raucous reckoning for an array of social justice issues. As this theme continues in 2021, it is heartwarming getting to know a quiet advocate in our midst. Meet Ted Ayres. Ayres will be a contributor to the journal with book reviews. This is an introduction to the person, Ted Ayres as social justice and education advocate

IR spectroscopy of COmosphere dynamics with the CO first overtone band

We discuss observations of the weak first overtone CO absorption band near 2300 nm with the U.S. National Solar Observatory Array Camera (NAC), a modern mid-infrared detector. This molecular band provides a thermal diagnostic that forms lower in the atmosphere than the stronger fundamental band near 4600 nm. The observed center-to-limb increase in CO line width qualitatively agrees with the proposed higher temperature shocks or faster plasma motions higher in the COmosphere. The spatial extent of chromospheric shock waves is currently at or below the diffraction limit of the available C0 lines at existing telescopes. Five minute period oscillations in line strength and measured Doppler shifts are consistent with the p-mode excitation of the photospheric gas. We also show recent efforts at direct imaging at 4600 nm. We stress that future large-aperture solar telescopes must be teamed with improved, dynamic mid-infrared instruments, like the NAC, to capitalize on the features that motivate such facilities.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Published in Astronomische Nachrichten on behalf of the 1st EAST-ATST Workshop: "Science with Large Solar Telescopes

Reconceptualising the third sector: toward a heterodox perspective

The paper explores the way the work of classic institutionalist authors can inform modern nonprofit economics. From the perspective of Thorstein Veblen, nonprofit organisation is explained as an institutional consequence of the pecuniary-industrial dichotomy. John R. Commons' institutional economics is used to highlight the role of nonprofit organisation in eliminating excessive scarcities of vital goods, thus achieving a more reasonable standard of living in a society. In the theoretical system of Clarence Ayres, nonprofit organisation is shown to embody a particular stage in the progressive weakening of the institution of private property in response to technological imperatives. The paper concludes with discussing nonprofit organisation as a conceptual link in reconciling the institutionalist paradigms of instrumental value and reasonable value.institutionalism, nonprofit organisation, Veblen, Commons, Ayres

There Are No Penalty Default Rules in Contract Law

In an influential article, Ian Ayres and Robert Gertner introduced the concept of the penalty default rule, a rule that fills a gap in an incomplete contract with a term that would not be chosen by a majority of parties similarly situated to the parties to the contract in question. Ayres and Gertner argued that such a rule might be efficient in a model in which contracting parties have asymmetric information. However, Ayres and Gertner did not provide any persuasive examples of penalty default rules; their best example is the Hadley rule, but this rule is probably not a penalty default rule. It turns out that there are no plausible examples of penalty default rules that solve the information asymmetry problem identified by Ayres and Gertner. The penalty default rule is a theoretical curiosity that has no existence in contract doctrine

There Are No Penalty Default Rules in Contract Law

In an influential article, Ian Ayres and Robert Gertner introduced the concept of the penalty default rule, a rule that fills a gap in an incomplete contract with a term that would not be chosen by a majority of parties similarly situated to the parties to the contract in question. Ayres and Gertner argued that such a rule might be efficient in a model in which contracting parties have asymmetric information. However, Ayres and Gertner did not provide any persuasive examples of penalty default rules; their best example is the Hadley rule, but this rule is probably not a penalty default rule. It turns out that there are no plausible examples of penalty default rules that solve the information asymmetry problem identified by Ayres and Gertner. The penalty default rule is a theoretical curiosity that has no existence in contract doctrine