We use NOMINATE (Nominal Three Step Estimation) (Poole and Rosenthal, 1983, 1997) to estimate ideal points for all Supreme Court Justices in Brazil from 2002 to 2012. Based on these estimated preferences we identify the nature of the two main dimensions along which disagreements tend to occur in...

A long-standing debate centers on the role of the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” in litigation. It is often suggested that wealthier plaintiffs are more likely to be repeat players, who tend to prevail in disputes before the courts. Do wealthy repeat players indeed capture courts and...

In spite of the clear objective assigned to the integration process in the 1950s, the institutional status of the European Union remains ambiguous and uneasy to define. The argument that we present in this article is that Europe has always hesitated between two forms of federalism. We use an...

This is an international set of case studies in institutionalized communication control regarding Mass Media, comparing in the Constitution, written laws, and other national institutions the influence of the state regarding the production and function of mass communication and related values in...

This article explores the confrontation between deontological and consequencialist theories in the debate between jurists and economists regarding the Colombian Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence. The main argument is that although the theories differ in many important points, they are not...

The Treaty of Lisbon is the EU’s new legal framework. The EU heads of state or government have agreed on a new EU treaty conceived to ensure that the enlarged EU consisting of 27 Member States functions more efficiently than under the Treaty of Nice, which is currently in place. The Treaty of...

Les auteurs tentent de trouver l’espace juridique qui permet d’aider à l’harmonisation de deux attachements juridiquement : celui relatif à l’espace national et celui ancré dans l’esprit nouveau de la citoyenneté européenne. La voie commune est celle de l’élection au suffrage...

This paper revisits the issue of the unilateral divorce law, taking into account that: 1/ the decisions to engage in marriage and then to divorce or to stay married are fundamentally sequential decisions; 2/ household consumption has a large joint component, generating economies of scale. The...

Under contingent fees the attorney gets a share of the judgement; under conditional fees the lawyer gets an upscale premium if the case is won which is, however, unrelated to the adjudicated amount. We compare conditional and contingent fees in a framework where lawyers are uninformed about the...