When should laws be enforced by private actors and when should society rely on law enforcement by public authorities? This question has been analyzed in great detail in law & economics scholarship. This article surveys the literature and outlines a framework of criteria for deciding whether...

The article engages in an ideology critique of international criminal law texts and discourse, drawing on a theoretical framework developed by critical legal studies scholars in order to interrogate, in a different jurisprudential context, the assumptions undergirding contemporary international...

This article has been significantly revised. Please refer to the revised version, titled “Allocating Regulatory Resources”, which is available on SSRN at: 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2304434' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2304434.This article incorporates the concept of legal placebo effects into...

Sports bribery and match-fixing have become a part of the on-going sports news cycle. European and Asian match-fixing scandals in soccer, cricket and tennis have rocked the sports world recently. The 1919 Black Sox World Series scandal and the 1970's Boston College point shaving incidents have...

A defendant who admits to having committed an offense may nevertheless be acquitted if he can provide a legally cognizable justification or excuse for his actions by raising an affirmative defense. This article explains how affirmative defenses generate social benefits in the form of avoided...

Preventive law enforcement increases social welfare by hindering the infliction of criminal harm, but produces inconvenience costs to the general public, because it requires interfering with the acts of innocents as well as attempters. This article shows that the optimal amount of investment in...

This symposium essay speculates about how Booker's loosening of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is likely to affect white-collar plea bargaining and sentencing. Prosecutors' punishment intuitions and the strong white-collar defense bar will keep white-collar sentencing from growing as harsh as...

A great concern with plea-bargains is that they may induce innocent individuals to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed. In this article, we identify schemes that reduce the number of innocent-pleas without affecting guilty individuals' plea-bargain incentives. Large compensations for...

Actors, whether guilty or innocent, may invest in costly measures to reduce their likelihood of being audited. The value of these investments are increasing in the probability with which they expect to be found guilty conditional on being audited. Because strengthening the standard of proof...