Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the...

Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the...

In 'Delivering Justice: Programme of Action to Strengthen the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels', the Secretary-General of the United Nations, argued that the rule of law involves more than the state and its institutions: it “is at the heart of the social contract between...

This paper explores the role of conflict as a bargaining tool. It first presents a simple bargaining model with one-sided incomplete information. Parties can choose the scope of the confrontation they may want to engage in: A limited conflict that only introduces delay, or an absolute conflict...

Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the...

This paper reviews the literature on policies aiming to improve the rule of law and the operation of a legal system. It takes a bottom up perspective of clients seeking access to justice and uses transaction costs on the market for justice as a criterion to evaluate justice policies. Most...

If justice is so dearly needed, why does it not emerge spontaneously? Socio-legal research shows how people shop for justice. They approach friends, advisers, lawyers, mediators, suppliers of legal information, local authorities, community leaders, priests, imams, arbiters, or judges in order to...

This paper presents an experiment performed to test the properties of an innovative bargaining mechanism (called automated negotiation) used to resolve disputes arising from Internet-based transactions. The main result shows that the settlement rule tends to chill bargaining as it creates...

"Fitting the forum to the fuss," i.e., finding an optimal way to deal with every dispute, is an appealing slogan of proponents of alternative dispute resolution. It also summarizes the contract one would expect rational disputants to make, once they are embroiled in a conflict they cannot...

'Fitting the forum to the fuss', i.e., finding an optimal way to deal with every dispute, is an appealing slogan of proponents of alternative dispute resolution. It also summarizes the contract one would expect rational disputants to make, once they are embroiled in a conflict they cannot...