The Interplay Between Law School Rankings, Reputations, and Resource Allocation: Ways Rankings Mislead

Symposium: The Next Generation of Law School Rankings held April 15, 2005 at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

Teaching in a Larger Social Context: Using Simulations to Demonstrate Socioeconomic Principles and Their Relevance to Law

In this Article, the authors describe socioeconomic theory application to law simulations that require student competition or cooperation and which demonstrate problems that their areas of law are designed to address. Stake uses two socioeconomic concepts to introduce students to property. First, he has an exercise that uses the allocation of property rights in whales to illustrate the concept of rent seeking or the possibility that a competitive market may induce investors to spend more collectively than they can hope to recover. Second, he uses cognitive psychology to analyze adverse possession. Dau-Schmidt, in the second half of his paper with Stake, describes innovative exercises he used in courses in labor and employment to illustrate employer-employee relationships

Economics, Behavioral Biology, and Law

The article first compares economics and behavioral biology, examining the assumptions, core concepts, methodological tenets, and emphases of the two fields. Building on this, the article then compares the applied interdisciplinary fields of law and economics, on one hand, with law and behavioral biology, on the other - highlighting not only the most important similarities, but also the most important differences. The article subsequently explores ways that biological perspectives on human behavior may prove useful, by improving economic models and the behavioral insights they generate. The article concludes that although there are important differences between the two fields, the overlaps between economics and biology warrant even greater congress between these two disciplines, and expanded exchange between the legal thinkers interested in each of them

Economics, Behavioral Biology, and Law

The article first compares economics and behavioral biology, examining the assumptions, core concepts, methodological tenets, and emphases of the two fields. Building on this, the article then compares the applied interdisciplinary fields of law and economics, on one hand, with law and behavioral biology, on the other - highlighting not only the most important similarities, but also the most important differences. The article subsequently explores ways that biological perspectives on human behavior may prove useful, by improving economic models and the behavioral insights they generate. The article concludes that although there are important differences between the two fields, the overlaps between economics and biology warrant even greater congress between these two disciplines, and expanded exchange between the legal thinkers interested in each of them