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Regulatory Capacity and State Environmental Leadership: California's Climate Policy

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

California has led the country on environmental policy since at least the 1960s, when it first tackled the state’s notorious air pollution. But in the last decade, its role as an environmental leader has eclipsed its own impressive history. California has enacted the world’s most ambitious policy to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Its program to do so—and some musings on the reasons for its leadership—are the focus of this essay.

Two Models of the Prison: Accidental Humanity and Hypermasculinity in the L.A. County Jail

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This Article considers what can be learned about humanizing the modern American prison from studying a small and unorthodox unit inside L.A. County’s Men’s Central Jail. As a formal matter, this unit—known as K6G—is the same as every other in Men’s Central, but for one key difference: its residents are exclusively gay men and transgender women. In reality, however, life in the unit contrasts dramatically with life in the rest of the Jail. Most notably, whereas the Jail’s general population (GP) is almost entirely governed by rules created and violently enforced by racially stratified gangs, K6G is wholly free of so-called “gang politics” and the threat of collective violence (a.k.a. riots) that gang rule creates. K6G is also relatively free of sexual assault—no small feat given that the people housed in this unit would otherwise be among the Jail’s most vulnerable residents. Although very far from ideal, in these and other ways, life in K6Gis markedly safer and more humane...

Comparative Effectiveness Research as Choice Architecture: The Behavioral Law and Economics Solution to the Health Care Cost Crisis

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The primary market-based approach to reining in health care costs is generally referred to in policy discussions as “consumer directed health care” (“CDHC”). The simple idea underlying CDHC is that patients will demand less care if they are burdened with a greater responsibility for paying the actual cost of that care than is common in our current system, in which costs are largely borne by public or private health insurance with little patient cost sharing. CDHC implicitly relies on the “rational choice” assumption of neoclassical economics that, given the proper incentive structure, individual consumers will allocate resources between medical care and other goods and services (and, within the category of medical care, between competing treatment options) in a manner that maximizes their “subjective expected utility” (“SEU”). As I explain below, there are compelling reasons to believe, however, that most consumers, as boundedly rational decisionmakers, would be particularly...

Securities Class Actions and Bankrupt Companies

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Though the Enron and WorldCom cases were the focus of much attention, very little is known about the subset of securities class actions involving bankrupt companies. The context of bankruptcy should be interesting to scholars of securities litigation because it includes the cases where shareholders suffer the greatest harm. The resolution of securities class actions where a bankrupt company is the issuer may shed light on the way in which context affects how parties and courts assess the merit of lawsuits.

There are two competing views as to the relationship between bankruptcy and securities fraud. Companies approaching bankruptcy have greater incentives to commit fraud in order to save the company or the jobs of managers. There thus might be a causal relationship between bankruptcy and securities fraud. On the other hand, the context of bankruptcy could lead parties and judges to more readily assume that fraud was present in bankrupt companies. This perception could...

Full Issue

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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Privatization's Progeny

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

These ought to be heady times for government service contracting. Once a controversial hobbyhorse of libertarian policy wonks and conservative ideologues, service contracting is now mainstream, championed by leading officials across the political spectrum. Once the target of serious legal challenges, contracting emerged from those early courtroom battles not only unscathed, but also emboldened by the judiciary’s tacit endorsement. And, once believed too dangerous to be introduced in contexts calling for the exercise of sovereign power, service contracting is now ubiquitous in military combat, municipal policing, rule promulgation, environmental policymaking, prison administration, and public-benefits determinations.

But times are changing. Privatization’s proponents have always relied on government service contracting to promote its four-fold agenda: boosting efficiency, maximizing budgetary savings, enhancing unitary control over the administrative state, and reaping...

The New Commonwealth Model of 55 Constitutionalism: Theory and Practice

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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New Technology, New Law: Stem Cell Products

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally about Women, Race, and Social Control

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent Approaches

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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Indians and Guns

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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Full Issue

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People