SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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Economics at the Pump
No full textPolicymakers are often tempted to implement various new laws and regulations intended to prevent gasoline price gouging. We recently carried out economic experiments to test such anti-gouging measures as mandated divorcement and uniform pricing, and we found that those regulations actually harm consumers rather than help them. The reason is simple: The well-meaning interventions are designed to manipulate market allocations, but they backfire because they cannot account for the complex incentives in an intricate industry. Changing the rules alters the behavior of refiners and station owners, which is why the legislation does not have its intended effect on market outcomes
Striking a Balance: Basic Questions About Consumer Protection Law (Symposium Introduction)
No full textThe Futile Quest for Racial Neutrality in Capital Selection and the Eighth Amendment Argument for Abolition Based on Unconscious Racial Discrimination
No full textThis article begins by discussing the characteristics of current capital-sentencing systems that make racial discrimination in capital selection uncontrollable. It also summarizes the social-science evidence that white-victim bias widely plagues capital selection. The article then develops the two central arguments suggested by its title. First, it provides a detailed explanation of why proposals for federal regulatory reform cannot succeed in achieving racial neutrality in capital selection. Second, it provides a theory to explain why unconscious racial discrimination in capital selection violates the Eighth Amendment and, given the futility of federal regulatory remedies, justifies abolition
Why It Is Essential to Teach About Mental Health Issues in Criminal Law (and a Primer on How to Do It)
No full textStudies consistently show a high prevalence of mental disorders among criminal defendants. Forensic mental health issues thus arise frequently in the criminal justice system and are commonly encountered by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges - much more so than some criminal law doctrines (e.g., necessity, duress, impossibility) routinely taught in criminal law courses. Yet rarely are students taught about mental illness, how to represent mentally ill clients, adjudicative competence, the mental health needs of various offender groups and how these unmet needs may contribute to criminal behavior, or the use of mental health mitigation evidence at sentencing. If taught at all, such topics are only part of a survey course in mental health law. Forensic mental health issues should be an integral part of the criminal law curriculum, beginning with the first-year criminal law course. This Article presents recommendations for teaching mental health issues in first-year criminal law, presents empirical data indicating that first-year students have mixed, though generally positive, reactions to incorporating such non-traditional content into the course, and provides a syllabus for an upper-level course in criminal law and psychology. Incorporating mental health topics into the traditional criminal law curriculum is part of the ongoing trend in legal education towards expanding pedagogy beyond legal doctrine into relevant social science disciplines that can inform legal policy and students\u27 understanding of the criminal justice system, perhaps more so than many of the doctrinal lessons we now teach
Suing Hitler\u27s Willing Business Partners: American Justice and Holocaust Morality
No full textThe Holocaust restitution lawsuits, filed mostly as class actions in American courts in the latter half of the 1990s, yielded billions of dollars in settlements for Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The American lawsuits, and the concomitant political campaign by American Jewish leaders and American government officials, also unearthed valuable historical data about the financial crimes of the Nazis and their cohorts during WW II. This post-Holocaust restitution movement, while viewed as a success, nevertheless created troubling moral issues, and this article focuses on five of them. First, does the demand for financial restitution demean the memory of the Holocaust? Second, once the funds are collected, how are they to be fairly distributed? This raises the provocative issue of who should be deemed a Holocaust survivor. Third, should some of these restitution funds be allocated for Holocaust education and remembrance, or do they belong solely to survivors? Fourth, while payments to individual survivors from these settlements were in the thousands of dollars, the class-action attorneys earned fees in the millions. Are these attorneys entitled to such fees, even though the fees represent less than 2 percent of the total amounts collected through the litigation? Fifth, many of the lawsuits were defended by Jewish lawyers. Although European corporations accused of wrongful conduct both during and after WW II are free to hire Jewish lawyers to defend their interests, should lawyers who are Jewish have taken on the defense of such suits? By confronting these gray zones of post-Holocaust restitution, this article aims to shed light on this latest and wholly unexpected legacy of the Holocaust
