SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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Discovering Economics in the Classroom with Experimental Economics and teh Scottish Enlightenment
No full textThe Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers’ Rules of Capture
No full textThis paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions lead to different rules of capture. Holding everything else constant, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely that the members of the community are civil-minded
More Information, More Ripoffs: Experiments with Public and Private Information in Markets with Asymmetric Information
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Codifying Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.
No full textBefore Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 129 S. Ct. 2252, 2266 (2009). due process mandated judicial disqualification in two basic situations: first, when the judge had a direct, personal, and substantial pecuniary interest in the case, or second, when the judge acted as judge, jury, prosecutor, and complaining witness, and there was no need for an instant response. Caperton adds a third category. Due process requires a judge to disqualify himself if a person who is not a party (but is a principal officer of a party) has made substantial independent expenditures to support the successful judicial candidate or to oppose the unsuccessful judicial candidate, thus helping the successful candidate. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion often refers to these independent expenditures as “contributions,” but admits that the multimillionaire who spent the money did not contribute any of it to the judge’s election campaign. (Blankenship, the officer of A.T. Massey, who owned only 0.35% of Massey’s stock, did not contribute more than the statutory maximum of $1,000 to Justice Benjamin’s campaign) The American Bar Association has tried to codify this ruling, but its attempts have been, and will continue to be, unsuccessful, because the Court’s opinion settles on not test but simply lists a series of events
Legal Mechanization of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response to Professor Branson with Some Supplemental Thoughts
No full textThis Response argues that as Alein Tort Statute jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the corporation must affirmatively go to help right the perceived wrongs in the world in which they operate. Although these questions could be posed simply as ones of policy or morality, with the injection of the ATS into the discussion they become questions that must be answered by examining the dictates and limits of law. Every expansion of liability, whether it is in terms of the persons or entities who may be sued or the nature of claims recognized as creating legal obligations, should be viewed cautiously
Professional Sports League Commissioners\u27 Authority and Collective Bargaining
No full textWith the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) collective bargaining agreements set to expire within the next two years, many experts are already predicting what changes may be made to both leagues’ governing labor documents. One likely point of contention between the owners and the players’ unions — though rarely discussed in the experts’ predictive discourse — is the power of the respective league commissioners to punish or discipline wayward players for misbehavior committed off of the court or field. This article will analyze this area of sports law by exploring this power of each league’s sports commissioner, as well as its place and significance in collective bargaining. This article will begin in Part II by giving a brief overview of the rise in commissioner discipline for players’ misbehavior committed off of the court or field and why commissioners punish in this manner. Parts II and III will track and situate the source of the commissioners’ power to discipline for such reasons — namely, in the leagues’ respective collective bargaining agreements. Part IV will describe how courts and arbitrators have treated commissioners’ decisions to punish players for their actions off of the court or field, and posit why such treatment is a concern for the labor unions representing professional athletes in these two leagues. Part IV will then give an overview of the collective bargaining process and the effect it has on this power of each league commissioner. Part IV will also explore why the players’ unions will likely make this power of the league commissioner a provision of the collective bargaining agreement that will be negotiated over, unlike in years past. Finally, Part V will provide some concluding insights
The Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers’ Rules of Capture
No full textThis paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions lead to different rules of capture. Holding everything else constant, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely that the members of the community are civil-minded
Judicial Disqualification in the Aftermath of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.
No full textDoes Due Process require a judge to disqualify himself if an individual spent independent funds to buy ads that criticized the judge\u27s opponent in a judicial election? The Supreme Court said yes (5 to 4) in the Caperton decision, and thus has created more uncertainty in the law. Does it matter if the person who paid for the independent ads was not a lawyer or a party but was only an employee of the party? And, does it matter if that employee\u27s financial interest in the law suit (if one were to pierce the corporate veil) is minor – substantially less than he spent on the ads? The Court appeared to say no. The majority referred to independent expenditures, and then repeatedly called them contributions, thus confusing a distinction that it has regarded as crucial in all other campaign finance cases. The majority required the judge to disqualify himself, but did not weigh the disadvantanges of a vague rule that introduces transaction costs in the form of uncertainy – an uncertainty that is inevitable when the Court created a totality of circumstances rule that will keep lawyers busy for years
Global Warming: A Second Coming for International Law?
No full textCurrently, there are no adequate mechanisms under international law to balance the competing tensions climate change presents to state sovereignty. On one hand, climate change threatens state sovereignty because the catastrophic loss of life and property of millions of people would deprive states of control over their domestic territories. Yet, other states rely on claims of their sovereignty to reject international legal obligations to mitigate climate change. This Article attributes the inadequacy of international law in the climate context to the evolution of the international community into an economic union that has historically privileged material interests over legal rights. It argues that given the high improbability of supplanting this economic union with a legal union that protects sovereign rights while also checking sovereign powers, an entirely innovative approach is necessary to redress climate change-related rights violations. It further argues that the focus of law and policy makers should shift away from inadequate explanations of the relevance of international law provided by current international legal theories toward normative-based solutions to address violations of both sovereignty and human rights