This chapter, forthcoming in the Research Handbook on Law and Time (F. Fagan & S. Levmore eds., Edward Elgar 2024), offers a contribution to the economics of legal transition. It argues that the lawmaker should mitigate the burden generated by the risk of legal change by avoiding "extreme"...

The global legal landscape is undergoing substantial transformations, adapting to an increasingly global market economy. Differences between legal systems create obstacles to transnational commerce. Countries can reduce these legal differences through non-cooperative and cooperative adaptation...

Government regulation is said to be justified when private markets fail to efficiently allocate resources owing to so-called "externalities." Yet as Ronald Coase convincingly showed decades ago, the presence of externalities can be usefully attributed to the "costs of market transactions,"...

U.S. law requires federal regulators to perform cost-benefit analysis of new rules proposed to correct market failure. As Coase convincingly showed decades ago, the inefficiencies of market failure can be usefully attributed to the costs of transacting. This essay proposes a novel and relatively...

Selfish utilitarianism, neo-classical economics, the directive of short-term income maximization, and the decision tool of cost-benefit analysis fail to protect our species from the significant risks of too much consumption, pollution, or population. For a longer-term survival, humanity needs to...

Immigration crimes are the most prosecuted federal crimes in America. This Article examines the benefits of the federal prosecution of immigration crimes (training, deterrence, and signaling/expression) and balances those benefits against the costs of such prosecutions (court-house costs,...

Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." State statutes prohibiting unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAPs) often mirror Section 5 of the FTC or include harmonization provisions instructing courts...

Although much has been written about the ethical implications of choosing to use cost-benefit analysis as a regulatory decision procedure, the ethical choices made “inside” cost-benefit analysis tend to be obscured by the technicality of cost-benefit procedures. Indeed, Congress, courts, and...

Well-Being and Fair Distribution provides a rigorous and comprehensive defense of the “social welfare function” as a tool for evaluating governmental policies. In particular, it argues for a “prioritarian” social welfare function: one that gives greater weight to well-being changes...

The German Basic Law is open for an interpretation that would allow the Constitutional Court to test the normative adequacy of most statutes. If the court does, it could be modelled as the supervisor of the legislator, i.e., of the agent of the people. The model predicts collusion between the...