Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
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The Law and Economics of Redistribution
Get PDFShould legal rules be used to redistribute income? Or should income taxation be the exclusive means for reducing income inequality? This article reviews the legal scholarship on this question. First, it traces how the most widely cited argument in favor of using taxes exclusively--Kaplow & Shavell\u27s (1994) double-distortion argument--evolved from previous debates about whether legal rules could even be redistributive and whether law and economics should be concerned exclusively with efficiency or with distribution as well. Next, it surveys the responses to the double-distortion argument. These responses appear to have had only limited success in challenging the sturdy reputation of the double-distortion argument. Finally, it highlights new directions in a debate revived by increasing economic inequality
Fish Encounters: Aquariums and their Veterinarians in a Rapidly Changing World
Get PDFThe extensive body of social science and humanities scholarship on zoos rarely discusses aquariums. Despite their independent historical trajectory and unique characteristics and challenges, aquariums are typically considered the younger sister to the more established terrestrial zoo institutions. This article is an initial exploration of modern public aquariums through the eyes of these institutions’ veterinarians, a small but rapidly growing, and quite influential, professional cohort. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a handful of aquarium veterinarians in various sites — including the United States, Canada, Israel, Portugal, Denmark, and Germany — the article documents some of the everyday challenges that these medical practitioners face when attempting to manage the health and wellbeing of captive marine animals. Their feet in several worlds, aquarium veterinarians must balance their medical training and animal welfare sensibilities with the specific nature of the aquatic animals under their care, and also with the understanding of their evolving responsibilities toward ocean conservation. For these professionals, the rights-welfare-conservation approaches to animal care are not abstract ideas but rather real-life situations that dictate their actual modes of practice in caring for marine animals. This can only be an initial study and thus highlights the need for additional scholarly work in the social sciences and humanities on aquariums, their wet forms of life, and the challenges — as well as the opportunities — that their management poses to the human caretakers of this space. This scholarly need is especially acute in light of the declining state of extant species and ecosystems in the world’s seas. Public aquariums and their veterinarians will arguably perform increasingly important roles in the conservation of our blue planet
Calls for Speculation: An Experimental Examination of Juror Perceptions of Attorney Objections
Get PDFShould attorneys object during trial? Does preserving the record outweigh the potential costs of objections, such as upsetting the jury or drawing attention to the evidence? Legal scholars have opined on the delicate balance attorneys must strike in their decisions to object, but researchers have offered little to guide attorneys making these in-the-moment decisions. I discuss results from two empirical studies that provide evidence that attorneys have less to fear from objections than legal scholars suggest. Based on these results, I provide suggestions for practicing attorneys
Not from Guile but from Entitlement: Lawful Opportunism Capitalizes on the Cracks in Contracts
Get PDFFew concepts have been more pivotal to contract law scholarship over the last forty years than the opportunism attributed ex ante and ex post to contracting parties, yet the lawful form of opportunism identified by Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson in 1991 remains surprisingly overlooked in favor of the blatant forms of opportunism that result from “self-interest seeking with guile.” This Article extends Williamson’s inchoate account of lawful opportunism and reports the first empirical study of the phenomenon.
The conceptual analysis of lawful opportunism is developed with reference to the bargaining underlying the classic impossibility decision, Taylor v. Caldwell. Three component elements are shown when combined to open “cracks” in contracts that tempt lawful opportunism: (1) the background doctrine of literal enforcement plus (2) a highly consequential disturbance that (3) strikes at the naïveté of the bargain. Because lawful opportunism leverages the legal entitlement to sue for breach of contract, its efficacy presupposes the counterparty’s express awareness, which makes the concept categorically different from the blatant forms of opportunism prevalent in the scholarship. This premise grounds the Article’s conclusion that the defining character of lawful opportunism is a strong enough sense of entitlement to choose to openly press for damages based on the letter of contract, notwithstanding the potentially punishing consequences to the counterparty of doing so under the circumstances.
The empirical study reported in this Article was designed to explore the individual-level factors that motivate participants to resort to lawful opportunism rather than cooperative—or blatantly opportunistic—alternatives. Our findings show, inter alia, that participants who viewed themselves as more entitled (the top 25% of all participants) were three times more likely to choose a lawfully opportunistic behavior in the crack of the contract. Lawful opportunism springs from a sense of entitlement, the way guile fuels blatant opportunism
