The New Legal Realism

The last decade has witnessed the birth of the New Legal Realism - an effort to go beyond the old realism by testing competing hypotheses about the role of law and politics in judicial decisions, with reference to large sets and statistical analysis. The New Legal Realists have uncovered a Standard Model of Judicial Behavior, demonstrating significant differences between Republican appointees and Democratic appointees, and showing that such differences can be diminished or heightened by panel composition. The New Legal Realists have also started to find that race, sex, and other demographic characteristics sometimes have effects on judicial judgments. At the same time, many gaps remain. Numerous areas of law remain unstudied; certain characteristics of judges have yet to be investigated; and in some ways, the existing work is theoretically thin. The New Legal Realism has clear jurisprudential implications, bearing as it does on competing accounts of legal reasoning, including Ronald Dworkin's suggestion that such reasoning is a search for integrity. Discussion is devoted to the relationship between the New Legal Realism and some of the perennial normative questions in administrative law.

[1]  Lior Jacob Strahilevitz,et al.  'Don't Try this at Home': Posner as Political Economist , 2007 .

[2]  David A. Weisbach,et al.  A Welfarist Approach to Disabilities , 2007 .

[3]  Christopher R. Berry,et al.  Fiscal Consequences of Electoral Institutions , 2007, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[4]  Stephen Choi,et al.  Choosing the Next Supreme Court Justice: An Empirical Ranking of Judicial Performance , 2004 .

[5]  Eugene Kontorovich,et al.  What Standing Is Good For , 2007 .

[6]  Adam B. Cox,et al.  The Temporal Dimension of Voting Rights , 2006 .

[7]  Herbert Hovenkamp.  The Antitrust Enterprise: Principle and Execution , 2005 .

[8]  D. Weisbach,et al.  The Irreducible Complexity of Firm-Level Income Taxes: Theory and Doctrine in Corporate Tax , 2007 .

[9]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Illusory Losses , 2007 .

[10]  Michael B. Abramowicz,et al.  Prediction Markets for Corporate Governance , 2006 .

[11]  T. Miles,et al.  Judging the Voting Rights Act , 2007 .

[12]  David A. Weisbach,et al.  What Does Happiness Research Tell Us About Taxation? , 2008, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[13]  Randal C. Picker,et al.  Of Pirates and Puffy Shirts: A Comment on the Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design , 2007 .

[14]  Adam B. Cox,et al.  Designing Redistricting Institutions , 2006 .

[15]  R. Posner,et al.  The Economics of Presidential Pardons and Commutations , 2007, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[16]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Indignation: Psychology, Politics, Law , 2007 .

[17]  M. Todd Henderson,et al.  From 'Seriatim' to Consensus and Back Again: A Theory of Dissent , 2007 .

[18]  A. Collins.  The Prime Directive , 2009 .

[19]  Eric A. Posner,et al.  The Case for For-Profit Charities , 2006 .

[20]  Abraham L. Wickelgren,et al.  Controlling Avian Influenza in Chickens , 2007 .

[21]  Cass R. Sunstein.  The Complex Climate Change Incentives of China and the United States , 2007 .

[22]  Richard H. McAdams,et al.  Reforming Entrapment Doctrine in United States v. Hollingsworth , 2007 .

[23]  M. Todd Henderson,et al.  Deconstructing Duff & Phelps , 2007 .

[24]  Chicago Unbound.  Climate Change and International Human Rights Litigation: A Critical Appraisal , 2007 .

[25]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Deliberating Groups versus Prediction Markets (or Hayek's Challenge to Habermas) , 2006, Episteme.

[26]  D. Weisbach,et al.  Consumption Taxation is Still Superior to Income Taxation , 2007 .

[27]  Eric A. Posner,et al.  The Second-Order Structure of Immigration Law , 2006 .

[28]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Climate Change and Animals , 2007 .

[29]  Randal C. Picker.  Who Should Regulate Entry into Iptv and Municipal Wireless? , 2006 .

[30]  Richard H. McAdams,et al.  The Economic Costs of Inequality , 2007, The Costs of Inequality in Latin America.

[31]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  If People Would Be Outraged by Their Rulings, Should Judges Care? , 2007 .

[32]  J. Nash,et al.  An Empirical Investigation into Appellate Structure and the Perceived Quality of Appellate Review , 2007 .

[33]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Willingness to Pay Versus Welfare , 2007 .

[34]  Jens Ludwig,et al.  Reefer Madness: Broken Windows Policing and Misdemeanor Marijuana Arrests in New York City, 1989-2000 , 2007 .

[35]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Cost-Benefit Analysis Without Analyzing Costs of Benefits: Reasonable Accommodation, Balancing, and Stigmatic Harms , 2007 .

[36]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Causation in Tort: General Populations vs. Individual Cases , 2007 .

[37]  Kal Raustiala,et al.  The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design , 2006 .

[38]  G. C. Griffin,et al.  Other People's Money , 2022, Filmmakers and Financing.

[39]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation , 1999 .

[40]  E. Posner,et al.  A Critique of the Odious Debt Doctrine , 2007 .

[41]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Incompletely Theorized Agreements in Constitutional Law , 2007 .

[42]  C. Sunstein,et al.  The Real World of Arbitrariness Review , 2007 .

[43]  Bernard E. Harcourt,et al.  A Reader's Companion to Against Prediction: A Reply to Ariela Gross, Yoram Margalioth, and Yoav Sapir on Economic Modeling, Selective Incapacitation, Governmentality, and Race , 2008, Law & Social Inquiry.

[44]  E. Posner,et al.  Constitutional Showdowns , 2009 .

[45]  M. Henderson,et al.  Paying CEOs in Bankruptcy: Executive Compensation when Agency Costs are Low , 2006 .

[46]  Ariel Porat,et al.  Liability Externalities and Mandatory Choices: Should Doctors Pay Less? , 2006 .

[47]  C. Sunstein,et al.  Second-Order Perfectionism , 2006 .

[48]  Bernard E. Harcourt,et al.  From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution. Part II: State Level Analysis , 2006 .

[49]  Randal C. Picker,et al.  Pulling a Rabbi Out of His Hat: The Bankruptcy Magic of Dick Posner , 2007 .

[50]  Janice Nadler,et al.  Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance , 2008 .

[51]  Anup Malani,et al.  Valuing Laws as Local Amenities , 2007 .

[52]  Lior Jacob Strahilevitz,et al.  Wealth without Markets , 2006 .

[53]  Eric A. Posner,et al.  Happiness Research and Cost-Benefit Analysis , 2008 .

[54]  D. Weisbach,et al.  The Taxation of Carried Interests in Private Equity , 2007 .

[55]  L. Strahilevitz.  Privacy versus Antidiscrimination , 2007 .

[56]  Lior Jacob Strahilevitz,et al.  Reputation Nation: Law in an Era of Ubiquitous Personal Information , 2007 .

[57]  Jacob E. Gersen,et al.  Timing Rules and Legal Institutions , 2007 .

[58]  C. Sunstein.  Montreal vs. Kyoto: A Tale of Two Protocols , 2006 .

[59]  Ariel Porat,et al.  The Unconventional Uses of Transaction Costs , 2006 .

[60]  Adrian Vermeule,et al.  The Credible Executive , 2006 .