Black Metropolis Research Consortium
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Car Seats as Contraception
No full textWe show that laws mandating use of child car safety seats significantly reduce birth rates, as many cars cannot fit three child seats in the back seat. Women with two children younger than their state’s age mandate have a lower annual birth probability of .73 percentage points. This effect is limited to births of third children, households with access to a car, and households with a male present, where both front seats are likely to be occupied. We estimate that these laws prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year and have decreased the total by 145,000 since 1980
The Differential Impact of Legal Origins on Firm Productivity
No full textThis paper examines the differential impact of legal origins on the distribution of firm-level total factor productivity (TFP) using a novel grouped-quantile treatment model with group-level unobservable characteristics. Using firm-level data across 51 countries from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, we find that firm-level TFP is higher on average in countries with common-law systems, especially in low-income countries. This impact is not uniform across the TFP distribution, with stronger impacts among high-productivity firms. Given the relatively low levels of international competitiveness among firms in low-income countries, this finding has important implications for their capability to break into export markets and create high-quality jobs. For the possible mechanisms of how legal origins affect firms’ TFP, we find that common-law countries have lower business obstacles as reflected in more favorable legal rules and regulations for access to finance, less corruption, less crime, less informality, and better tax administration
Cross-Border Influencers: Democracy and Externalities
Full text linkThis Article explores the fact that United States law permits domestic crossborder political influences while restricting foreign interference in elections. It tries to show that the law is inconsistent in trying to balance its faith in democracy (in a given jurisdiction) with its concern for externalities. Laws forbidding all cross-border attempts to influence politics would seem to reflect the view that decision-making processes across a border should be respected rather than subject to interference, assuming that the other jurisdiction is reasonably democratic. The analysis explores, and offers examples of, the interaction between a faith in democracy and the consideration of externalities, such as cross-border pollution
International Borders: Yours, Mine, and Ours
Full text linkInternational borders have become divisive issues in international and domestic politics. They have also become sites where the human rights of vulnerable persons have increasingly been documented as at risk. Policies of border hardening in the face of growing human mobility and other external threats—real and imagined—have made international borders focal sites of conflict at many levels. This Article argues that international law can reframe our understanding of bordering, leading to a more constructive approach to border management and greater respect for human rights. Borders are essentially institutions with the potential to settle coordination problems over territory. But of growing importance, they are also relational institutions that often have drastic effects on social and economic interactions. Their relational aspects require governance, for which international law has developed the law of neighborliness. In turn, the law of neighborliness requires, among other things, respect for mutually agreed covenants between sovereign states. Borders should not be presumed to pose inherent national security risks. Indeed, the presumption should be reversed: borders create zones where the need and obligation for friendly cooperation, including policies aimed at human rights protections, is at its highest
Defunding Cities: Reconsidering the Fiscal Sanctioning Measures of State Punitive Preemption Statutes
Full text linkIn an effort to deter and punish cities for passing ordinances that conflict with state priorities, states are utilizing a new form of legislative power: punitive preemption. It is generally considered a legitimate use of state power to utilize statutes to preempt local measures and ordinances deemed inconsistent with state policy. State legislatures, however, are attaching punitive mechanisms to preemption legislation that, in the event of local noncompliance, create criminal and civil liability for local officials, provide removal mechanisms for elected officials, and allow for the fiscal sanctioning of local governments.
This Comment considers whether local governments are legally protected from state-sanctioned punitive financial penalties. In doing so, it distinguishes financial penalties from permissible forms of state preemption and analyzes existing judicial decisions that consider financial penalty arguments. After discussing the existing doctrine, this Comment develops a conceptual framework to suggest that certain punitive preemption tools are not legal. Ultimately, this Comment maintains that coercive financial mechanisms attached to preempting legislation are unconstitutionally coercive as they functionally force local governments to relinquish core elements of their sovereignty
Cooperative Federalism and Patent Legislation: A Study Comparing China and the United States
Full text linkHow should patent legislative power be allocated between central and local governments in order to construct a patent system conducive innovation? A comparative analysis of the models of the U.S. and China sheds light on this question. The early American states established their patent systems before the formation of the federal system, but the U.S. Constitution arrogated patent legislative power to the federal government, ending the era of decentralized patent systems. This centralized structure ensures uniformity in rules but might hinder the system\u27s adaptability and ability to experiment. In contrast, as China\u27s patent system evolved, its patent legislative power spread from the central to the local governments. This shift led to the coexistence of dual-level patent legislative structure. Currently, twenty-nine out of thirty-one province-level authorities (93.5%) and twenty-one out of 323 city-level authorities with local legislative power (6.5%) have established local patent laws. China\u27s patent !)Stem is not entirely decentralized but rather, semi-decentralized, as the locales not only implement their local patent laws but also must enforce the central government\u27s national patent laws. China\u27s semi-decentralized patent legislation model embodies significant features of cooperative federalism, where the central and local governments share the national power to handle affairs and collaborate to address issues. Yet, the central government maintains a dominant position in this cooperative relationship, as a consequence of China\u27s unitary state structure. Compared to the current centralized patent legislation model in the U.S., China\u27s semi-decentralized patent legislation model has the advantage of making statutory law more adaptable to local specificities and promoting local competition and institutional innovation. However, it also faces challenges, such as increased costs due to inconsistency; efficiency decline stemming from rent-seeking behaviors; and the risk that local protectionism will create anti-competitive effects
The Selective Enforcement of Government Regulations: Battleground States, State Regulators, and the Environmental Protection Agency
No full textThe Electoral College creates incentives for politicians and regulators to direct policy favors toward battleground or swing states. We examine whether this affects regulatory enforcement and find that facilities in battleground states are less likely to be found in violation of the Clean Water Act, partially because the permit limits for facilities in these states are less restrictive. Identification is obtained by analyzing violation rates of similar facilities located along the border between battleground and nonbattleground states
The Information Costs of Exclusion
Full text linkThe appropriate scope of the right to exclude is among the most contentious topics in property theory: while some defend direct state regulations that override owners’ right to exclude unwanted uses from their property, others defend greater deference to owners’ authority, implemented by stringent enforcement of the right to exclude. In recent years, scholars who favor exclusion have developed novel arguments to support it by focusing on the information costs of property. Because every- one must respect property rights, those rights must be simple enough for everyone to understand their content. And the right to exclude, which requires everyone to keep off property unless the owner allows them on, is simple enough to be understood easily by those who must respect it. Thus, these theorists conclude, the information costs of property favor respecting the right to exclude.
This Article defends an alternative analysis of how the information costs of property bear on the proper scope of exclusion. Legal rules generate two kinds of information costs: the costs of learning rules and the costs of applying them. While simpler rules may be easier to learn, they need not be easier to apply. Instead, a rule is easy to apply if individuals can easily determine whether a particular action would violate it, which requires the rule to define violations in terms of facts that are easy for individuals to ascertain. Once the costs of applying the right to exclude are considered, I claim, the law sometimes reduces information costs not by respecting exclusion but rather by restricting it.
The right to exclude prohibits nonowners from crossing property boundaries without the owner’s consent. Thus, it defines violations primarily in terms of two facts—whether an action crosses a boundary and whether the owner has consented. While it can thus be applied cheaply if these facts are easy to ascertain, it will be costly to apply if not. When individuals would struggle to determine whether an action would cross a parcel boundary, direct regulation of permissible uses may reduce information costs even though it overrides exclusion—as has occurred with activities ranging from airplane overflights to oil and gas production and urban land development. Similarly, because owners’ mental states are often difficult to identify, rules conditioning property access on owner consent can impose substantial information costs, which can be reduced by mandating access to property open to the public at large, regardless of owner consent. Information costs do not uniformly sup- port greater exclusion, then, as exclusion’s defenders have argued; rather, those costs sometimes favor restricting it
Professional Discipline and the Labor Market: Evidence from Lawyers
No full textI investigate the labor market outcomes of American lawyers after they are professionally disciplined. To do so, I match employment data for 672,000 lawyers in 2012 and 2020 to novel data on public disciplinary measures imposed by state licensing bodies since 1990. I find that lawyers who are professionally disciplined are not representative of the legal profession in terms of the type of law firms they work for and their practice areas. Compared with similar nondisciplined lawyers, disciplined lawyers are more likely to subsequently end up in law firms with limited oversight and in practice areas with unsophisticated clients. Investigating causal channels, I find suggestive evidence that the labor market outcomes of lawyers after they are disciplined likely operate through law firms’ concerns over reputation and by serving as a signal of lawyer type
The Finality of Reinstated Orders of Removal Under 8 U.S.C. § 1252
No full textFederal law authorizes the reinstatement of a prior removal order when a noncitizen “reenter[s] the United States without authorization after having already been removed.” It further provides an “expedited process” for doing so, denying to such noncitizens the right to contest before an immigration judge their removability or inadmissibility. The question whether a noncitizen is removable is thus definitively settled immediately upon reinstatement. But the question to where the noncitizen will be removed is less certain. This is because noncitizens subject to reinstated orders of removal retain the right to pursue “withholding-only” relief, which precludes removal to the noncitizen’s home country when extreme dangers await them there.
This lag—between when removability, on one hand, and the country of removal, on the other, are determined—has exposed an ambiguity in the statute providing for judicial review of a “final order of removal,” 8 U.S.C. § 1252. Specifically, § 1252(b)(1) requires that a noncitizen file a petition for review within thirty days of the final order of removal. But when does a reinstated order of removal be- come final? Specifically, does finality attach when the prior removal order is rein- stated (such that removability is determined) or when the administrative process for adjudicating claims for withholding-only relief has concluded (such that the country of removal is determined)? On this question, the courts of appeals are divided.This lag—between when removability, on one hand, and the country of removal, on the other, are determined—has exposed an ambiguity in the statute providing for judicial review of a “final order of removal,” 8 U.S.C. § 1252. Specifically, § 1252(b)(1) requires that a noncitizen file a petition for review within thirty days of the final order of removal. But when does a reinstated order of removal be- come final? Specifically, does finality attach when the prior removal order is rein- stated (such that removability is determined) or when the administrative process for adjudicating claims for withholding-only relief has concluded (such that the country of removal is determined)? On this question, the courts of appeals are divided.This lag—between when removability, on one hand, and the country of removal, on the other, are determined—has exposed an ambiguity in the statute providing for judicial review of a “final order of removal,” 8 U.S.C. § 1252. Specifically, § 1252(b)(1) requires that a noncitizen file a petition for review within thirty days of the final order of removal. But when does a reinstated order of removal become final? Specifically, does finality attach when the prior removal order is reinstated (such that removability is determined) or when the administrative process for adjudicating claims for withholding-only relief has concluded (such that the country of removal is determined)? On this question, the courts of appeals are divided.
This Comment contends that the soundest construction of § 1252 deems reinstated orders of removal final when withholding-relief proceedings conclude. Such a construction is consistent with Supreme Court precedent, is more faithful to the statutory text, and better comports with the framework established by § 1252