In this brief Article, I explore the growing empirical evidence in support of the public choice model of judicial decision making. Although legal scholars have traditionally been reluctant to engage in a critical inquiry into the role of judicial self-interest on judicial behavior, recent...

Despite the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in United States v. Booker, which enhanced the power of district court judges to sentence defendants below the range prescribed by the federal sentencing guidelines, the great majority of federal sentences continue to follow the guidelines'...

In the civil justice system, judges engage in case management and settlement promotion more than they do in trial and judgment. Despite the importance of judges’ role in settlement, its empirical depiction and jurisprudential theorization are lacking. This gap likely results from a key...

Should the party who loses in litigation be forced to pay the legal fees of the winner? This paper surveys the economic literature regarding the effects of legal fee shifting on a variety of decisions arising before and during the litigation process. Section 2 provides a brief survey of the...

In this paper we consider the effects of legal-expenses insurance on settlement. Using a one-shot asymmetric information model of litigation, we scrutinize the litigants' interactions under the situations that the plaintiff is before-the-event insured, after-the-event insured or self-funded. We...

This paper examines the law and economics of third-party financed litigation. I explore the conditions under which a system of third-party financiers and litigators can enhance social welfare, and the conditions under which it is likely to reduce social welfare. Among the applications I consider...

This article argues that the enforcement in England in Re New Cap Reinsurance Corporation of an Australian monetary judgment rendered under Australian insolvency law does not sit easily with the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933. This is because the Foreign Judgments...

This essay on the class action will be a chapter in the Procedural Law and Economics volume forthcoming from Edward Elgar. It reviews the law-and-economics literature on the class action, current as of 2008 (when I wrote the chapter). It discusses the benefits of large claim and small claim...