Lifetime tenure maximizes judicial independence by shielding judges from political pressures but creates problems of its own. Judges with independence may implement their political preferences. Judges may remain in office after their abilities degrade with age. The U.S. federal system addresses...

This article tests for the presence of bias in judicial citations within federal circuit court opinions. Our findings suggest bias along three dimensions. First, judges base outside-circuit citation decisions in part on the political party of the cited judge. Judges tend to cite judges of the...

This article provides the first empirical analysis of punitive damages in securities arbitrations. Using a data set of over 6,800 securities arbitration awards, we find that claimants prevailed in 48.9 percent of arbitrations and that 9.1 percent of those claimant victories included a punitive...

Using a data set of securities class actions filed from 2003 to 2005, this study assesses the effect of the lead plaintiff presumption enacted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 on agency costs of lead counsel for the class and class members. Examining the pretrial...

We study the role of attorneys as arbitrators in securities arbitration. We find that arbitrators who also represent brokerage firms or brokers in other arbitrations award significantly less compensation to investor-claimants than do other arbitrators. We find no significant effect for...

In September 2000, a Brussels court ruled in favor of a hedge fund that held an unpaid debt claim against the Republic of Peru. The decision was based on a novel interpretation of the common pari passu clause. Policy makers and practitioners suggested that this decision signaled a paradigm shift...

This paper builds on contributions to the Sloan conference Benefit-Cost Analysis of Financial Regulation, held at the University of Chicago, to show how benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of financial regulations should be conducted. Our major themes are that (1) on theoretical grounds, BCA should be...

A growing body of research on happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) shows, among other things, that people adapt to many injuries more rapidly than is commonly thought, fail to predict the degree of adaptation and hence overestimate the impact of those injuries on their SWB, and, similarly,...

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has jurisdiction over disputes between nations and has decided dozens of cases since it began operations in 1946. Its defenders argue that the ICJ decides cases impartially. Its critics argue that the members of the ICJ vote the interests of the states...