Two central puzzles about social norms are how they are enforced and how they are created or modified. The sanctions for violation of a norm can be categorized as automatic, guilt, shame, informational, bilateral- costly, and multilateral-costly. Problems in creating and enforcing norms are...

Larry Lessig flagellates himself about losing the Eldred case, which upheld the legality of copyright extensions. He shouldn't: Eldred was unwinnable. (The Court's 7-2 vote is one clue). Besides, the worst of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act's effects can still be made to disappear,...

Judge Richard Posner argues that empirical work provides strong support for the deterrence value of capital punishment and that the number of truly innocent people executed for murder is "vanishingly small."

The question is whether it is possible to have a congestion externality in intellectual property, such as the Mickey Mouse character. Literally, the answer is no. Figuratively, it is yes.

This Article attempts to explain the views about business of Brandeis and Holmes. The Article analyses why their economic thinking differed as it did; to what extent it comports with a modern understanding of economics; and how Holmes and Brandeis could have been such close allies when their...

In September 1998, the Judicial Conference of the United States abandoned its latest attempt to regulate the timing of interviews and offers in the law clerk selection process. This paper surveys the further unraveling of the market since then, makes comparisons with other entry level...

Two recent failures of the U.S. intelligence system have led to the creation of high-level investigative commissions. The failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11 prompted the creation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004), or 9/11 Commission.The...

The world-wide and ongoing rise in obesity has generated enormous popular interest and policy concern in developing countries, where it is rapidly becoming the major public health problem facing such nations. As a consequence, there has been a rapidly growing field of economic analysis of the...