Divorce Bargaining: The Limits on Private Ordering

In an article published in the Yale Law Journal, I suggested an alternative perspective for family law scholars concerned with divorce. It emphasized negotiation, not adjudication; private ordering, not regulation. This change in emphasis seemed timely, if not overdue. Available evidence has long shown that the overwhelming majority of divorcing couples resolve the distributional questions concerning marital property, alimony, child support, and custody without bringing any contested issue to court for adjudication. Therefore, the primary impact of the legal system falls not on the small number of contested cases, but instead on the far greater number of divorcing couples outside the courtroom who bargain in the shadow of the law. Thus, my emphasis is on negotiation not adjudication

Discord behind the Table: The Internal Conflict among Israeli Jews concerning the Future of Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza

Our exclusive focus is on one of these conflicts-the profound internal rift among Israeli Jews over the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. We are especially interested in the role of the national religious settlers and the Israeli government\u27s response to them. These settlers lead the movement and are dominant actors in the internal conflict. The current controversies within Israel regarding Prime Minister Ariel Sharon\u27s unilateral initiative, which was not the product of a negotiation with Palestinians, demonstrate the importance of understanding the internal conflict within Israel and the dominant role of the leaders of the settlement movemen

Does Disputing Through Agents Enhance Cooperation? Experimental Evidence

A distinctive characteristic of our mechanisms for conflict resolution is that litigation is carried out by agents chosen by disputing principals. Does the fact that clients choose lawyers to carry on their disputes facilitate dispute resolution or instead exacerbate conflict? The dominant contemporary view is that the involvement of lawyers magnifies the contentiousness of litigation and wastes social resources, prolonging and escalating the conflict in ways that enrich the legal profession but not the clients. But in a recent article, Ronald Gilson and Robert Mnookin suggest another possibility: by choosing lawyers with reputations for cooperation, clients may commit to cooperative litigation in circumstances where the clients themselves would not otherwise trust each other. Using the methodology of experimental economics, this article presents a test of their idea that, by choosing cooperative agents under well-specified procedures, principals may sustain more cooperation than they could on their own. Our experimental findings are consistent with the Gilson-Mnookin hypothesis