Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
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Finding A Better Way Around Employment At Will: Protecting Employees’ Autonomy Interests Through Tort Law
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Policy Meltdown: How Climate Change Is Driving Excessive Nuclear Energy Investment
Get PDFThe United States is currently experiencing what some have labeled a nuclear energy renaissance. This so-called renaissance responds in part to growing concerns about global warming and the need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity production. A growing number of policymakers and scholars view nuclear energy development as one of the most promising means of slowing climate change because nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. They are increasingly advocating that nuclear energy receive policy treatment at least as favorable as that afforded to renewable energy strategies such as wind and solar energy. Some state governments are also citing global warming as a primary reason for investing millions to extend the lives of aging nuclear power plants and to keep these plants operational and cost-competitive in an era of low-cost natural gas. Unfortunately, in their zeal to save nuclear energy plants and promote additional nuclear energy development as a means of combatting global warming, policymakers are underestimating the true costs associated with nuclear power in ways that could adversely impact humankind for centuries to come.
This Article applies familiar principles of microeconomics and behavioral economics to analyze the nation\u27s recent flirtation with nuclear energy as a primary response to global warming. Among other things, policymakers and the public seem to increasingly allow excessive optimism, myopia, path dependence problems, or intergenerational externality problems resulting in their under-consideration of the full social costs of nuclear energy. This Article ultimately argues that, when one considers all the societal costs of nuclear energy, renewable energy strategies such as wind and solar development are afar more cost-justifiable means of responding to global warming
Comparative Analysis as an Antidote to Tunnel Vision in Criminal Law Reform: The Example of Complicity
Get PDFIn the context of criminal law reform, the tunnel vision that is produced by deeply embedded paradigms or patterns of criminality has the effect of stifling creativity. If left unchecked, the assumptions that serve as the backdrop to our criminal justice system will likely prevent reformers from giving serious consideration to alternatives that are in tension with the dominant patterns of criminality. I will end by arguing that one way of avoiding this outcome is by engaging in the comparative analysis of criminal law. Comparative analysis serves as a kind of “second opinion” that may help criminal law reformers to keep in check their natural tendency to conform to deeply embedded patterns of criminality
