SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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Historical Property Rights, Sociality, and the Emergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-Distance Trade
No full textThis laboratory experiment explores the extent to which impersonal exchange emerges from personal exchange with opportunities for long-distance trade. We design a three-commodity production and exchange economy in which agents in three geographically separated villages must develop multilateral exchange networks to import a third good only available abroad. For treatments, we induce two distinct institutional histories to investigate how past experience with property rights affect the evolution of specialization and exchange. We find that a history of un-enforced property rights hinders our subjects\u27 ability to develop the requisite personal social arrangements necessary to support specialization and effectively exploit impersonal long-distance trade
Tax Terrorism: Nasty Truths About Investor Control Theory and the Accommodation of Social Security Privatization
No full textThe privatization of Social Security could have promised profound challenges to the investor control doctrine (given the level of investor discretion anticipated). Revenue Ruling 2003-91 handily eliminates the apparently imminent conflict between longstanding, IRS-asserted doctrine and the demands of the political arena. One could argue that the pronouncement reflects little more than doctrinal evolution, but such evolution is a giant leap away from the twenty-two-year-old notion that investor discretion should be minimal and appears to be a doctrinal accommodation of potential Social Security privatization. This Article argues that the investor control doctrine should be dismissed. I further propose that investor discretion should be allowed with respect to the investment of contract assets, subject to (1) investment professional guidance or risk assessment, (2) age-sensitive adjustments with respect to the percentage of contract assets subject to investor discretion, and (3) limits with respect to the aggregate amount a taxpayer may invest in variable life insurance or variable annuity contracts
Hate Crime Law and the Limits of Inculpation
No full textCritics sometimes maintain that hate crime law punishes an offender for her motive and character and is therefore doctrinally and morally illegitimate. This manuscript explores the concept of culpability to examine this challenge, and argues that critics inaccurately assume that our criminal law conditions culpability on a robust understanding of choice. This inaccuracy significantly undermines the doctrinal critique against hate crime law, which in fact appears to be consistent with many other laws that consider motive and character as relevant factors in determining degree of guilt and proportionate punishment. Notwithstanding the apparent doctrinal validity of hate crime law, the author questions whether enhanced punishment for racially motivated crimes is morally (and politically) defensible in light of our current theoretical and psychological understanding of race and racism
Urban Runoff, Its Consequences, and the Problems of Regulation
No full textThis introduction was part of the Chapman Law Review’s symposium entitled “The Slippery Slope: Urban Runoff, Water Quality, and the Issue of Legal Authority.
Sovereignty and the American Courts at the Cocktail Party of International Law: The Dangers of Domestic Invocations of Foreign and International Law
No full textWith increasing frequency and heightened debate, United States courts have been citing foreign and “international” law as authority for domestic decisions. This trend is inappropriate, undemocratic, and dangerous. The trend touches on fundamental concepts of sovereignty, democracy, the judicial role, and overall issues of effective governance. There are multiple problems with the judiciary’s reliance on extraterritorial and extra-constitutional foreign or international sources to guide their decisions. Perhaps the most fundamental flaw is its interference with rule of law values. To borrow from Judge Harold Levanthal, the use of international sources in judicial decision-making might be described as “the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one’s friends.” Activism is emboldened and the rule of law is diminished. Sovereignty dictates that a nation governs itself and creates its own laws. When authorities begin to allow the piercing of the veil of sovereignty – allowing outside sources to pierce the boundaries of domestic law – there is a surrender of the legislative autonomy a nation holds. But if the legislature is the ultimate lawmaking power, it is inappropriate for the judiciary to look beyond domestic pronouncements of law and invoke foreign or international pronouncements of “law” to decide governance standards. Predilections of particular judges should not punctuate domestic pronouncements or allow the projection of international standards into controlling law when not promulgated through the political process. There is an emerging and growing debate regarding the judicial invocation and citation of international “law” or foreign law. Courts interpreting United States law should be interpreting United States law. The invocation of foreign or international sources in judicial opinions circumvents the solemn duty of the judiciary to decide what the law is, not what it should be
Experimental Gasoline Markets
No full textZone pricing in wholesale gasoline markets is a contentious topic in the public policy debate. Refiners contend that they use zone pricing to be competitive with local rivals. Critics claim that zone pricing benefits the oil industry and harms consumers. With a controlled experiment, we investigate the competitive effects of zone pricing on consumers, retail stations, and refiners vis-a-vis the proposed policy prescription of uniform wholesale pricing to retailers. We also examine the issue of divorcement and the rockets and feathers phenomenon. The former is the legal restriction that refiners and retailers cannot be vertically integrated, and the latter is the perception that retail gasoline prices rise faster than they fall in response to random walk movements in the world price for oil