Investigation of Sculpture and The Whimsy of Control

Not included

Lost in Translation: The Economic Analysis of Law in the United States and Europe

In this essay, we examine the reasons why the economic analysis of law has not flourished in European countries as it has in the U.S. In particular, we focus on three European countries - the United Kingdom (U.K.), Germany, and France. We argue that differences in culture, the legal system and the academy have led to differing degrees of success of the law and economics movement in each country. We speculate that, although there is currently less interest in the economic analysis of the law in Europe than in the United States, European interest could dramatically increase if scholars adopt more communitarian analyses aimed at analyzing legislative polices rather than judicial decisions

The Duty to Bargain in Good Faith: NLRB v. Truitt Manufacturing Co. and NLRB v. Insurance Agents’ International Union

This article discusses two classic Supreme Court cases from the 1950\u27s that explore the contours of the obligation to bargain in good faith: NLRB v. Truitt Manufacturing Co. and NLRB v. Insurance Agents\u27 International Union. In the Truitt case, the Supreme Court held that the obligation to bargain in good faith requires an employer to open its books to the union when the employer refuses a request for a wage increase on the basis that such an increase will drive the employer out of business. In the Insurance Agents\u27 case, the Supreme Court held that union slow-down tactics were consistent with the union\u27s obligation to bargain in good faith even though these tactics were not protected by the NLRA. These two cases are considered together because their seemingly inconsistent holdings illustrate the tension in the NLRA between regulating the conduct of collective bargaining to promote the parties\u27 ability to bargain cooperatively in industrial peace, while still allowing the recourse to economic weapons that is necessary for the process of collective bargaining. This chapter offers the stories behind these two great cases, the arguments the lawyers made on behalf of their clients, how these cases were resolved by the Board and the courts, and some of the theory behind what it means to bargain in good faith

An Economic Analysis of the Criminal Law as a Preference-Shaping Policy

In this Article I provide an economic analysis of criminal law as a preference-shaping policy. I argue that in addition to creating disincentives for criminal activity, criminal punishment is intended to promote various social norms of individual behavior by shaping the preferences of criminals and the population at large. By taking into account this preference-shaping function, I explain many of the characteristics of criminal law that have heretofore escaped the logic of the economic model. It is also the preference-shaping function and the prerequisite ordering of preferences that distinguish criminal law from tort law. My analysis suggests that society will make an activity a crime whenever the social benefits of changing individual preferences through criminal punishment outweigh the social costs. However, since this weighing of social costs and benefits is conducted through a political process on the basis of ethical and moral standards and requires estimates of the costs of changing opportunities and preferences, I conclude that other disciplines can usefully inform the economic model of criminal law

Economics and Sociology: The Prospects for an Interdisciplinary Discourse of Law

My purposes in this essay are two-fold. First, I provide some background on the disciplines of economics and sociology as a basis for the discussion at this Symposium and for my own discussion of the potential for an interdisciplinary discourse on law. In this regard, in the first section of the essay I provide a brief history of the relationship between the two disciplines, a brief outline of the basic characteristics of each disciplinary perspective, and a brief discussion of the emerging opportunities for useful exchange between the two disciplines. Second, I examine the prospects that the economic analysis of law can be usefully informed by sociological perspectives. I examine just this portion of the possible discourse between the two disciplines because, as a law and economics scholar, it is this portion of the discourse that I feel most competent to address. I leave it to my colleagues who study law from a sociological perspective to discern what can be gleaned from the economic perspective that is of most use to them in their analysis