In Victoria and New South Wales, young learner drivers have been required to have 120 hours supervised driving before taking their provisional license test since July 2007. Queenslanders under 25 have to show that they have completed 100 supervised hours. Most other states require at least 50...

The 'nanny state' has expanded in recent years. Politicians and bureaucrats have increasingly sought to restrict what individuals are permitted to do with their own bodies on their own property. Prohibitions is a corrective to the prevailing support for such authoritarianism. This collection...

In this article, I will examine the doctrine of ignorantia legis, or presumed knowledge of the law, as it functions in the current milieu of American criminal justice, the age of the regulatory crime. Much ink has been spilled over this doctrine, and many pieces argue against ignorantia legis,...

On November 14, 2013, Professor Dervan was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force. Available here is his written testimony. In his written testimony, Professor Dervan examines the phenomenon of...

With its tremendous popularity among Millennials and Generation Z, esports represents one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. sports and entertainment market. It is the source of massive amounts of venture capital inflow, unprecedented marketing and media dollars, and altogether new...

The conventional wisdom is that this country’s privately owned critical infrastructure — banks, telecommunications networks, the power grid, and so on — is vulnerable to catastrophic cyber-attacks. The existing academic literature does not adequately grapple with this problem, however,...

Efforts to avoid punishment are socially wasteful. Not only do they limit the deterrent effect of punishment but they may actually lead to the paradoxical result that more severe punishment for crime induces more crime. The law has therefore constantly attempted to deter avoidance efforts and...

Adam Smith warned that the officers of corporations were likely to be unfaithful agents that would harm shareholders. Modern anti-regulatory economists sought to remedy this flaw at capitalism’s core by supercharging executive compensation. However, modern compensation systems further...

In 2000-2001 the California energy crisis cost billions of dollars and the blackouts endangered lives. The causes of the crisis were contested along partisan lines. Republicans (and neo-classical economists) argued that “a perfect storm” of increased demand and reduced supply triggered the...

Mandatory restrictions in employment law, designed to promote the welfare of workers, are debated fiercely. Proponents argue that they protect workers. Opponents believe that they spawn inefficiency and harm workers. Yet all agree that their welfare implications depend on their degree of...