The appeals process - whereby a litigant disappointed with the decision of a first-order tribunal can seek reconsideration before a higher tribunal - is a widely observed feature of adjudication. What rationale can be offered for incorporation of an appeals process in a system of adjudication?...

Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed entirely on the basis of their effects on individuals’ well-being. This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness (other than many purely distributive notions). We...

This article studies the implications for the theory of deterrence of (a) the manner in which individuals' disutility from imprisonment varies with the length of the imprisonment term and (b) discounting of the future disutility and future public costs of imprisonment. Two questions are...

This article develops the point that incentive and risk-bearing problems associated with contractual holdup may justify legal intervention. Contractual holdup is considered both for fresh contracts and for modifications of contracts. One type of legal intervention is flat voiding of contracts....

A basic question about litigation concerns the frequency of plaintiff victory at trial and how cases that go to trial relate to settled cases. In a stimulating paper, Priest and Klein advanced a model in which there is a tendency for plaintiffs to prevail at trial with probability 50 percent....

When is it socially advantageous for legal rules to be changed in the light of altered circumstances? In answering this basic question here, a simple point is developed-that past compliance with rules tends to reduce the social advantages of change. The reasons are twofold: adjusting to a new...