An important criticism of affirmative action policies in admissions is that they may hurt minority students who are thereby induced to attend selective schools. We use two comparisons to identify so-called “mismatch” effects in law schools, with consistent results. Black students attain...

This paper develops an informational model of litigation in which court decisions are a function of legal representation. In this model, resource constraints determine how much parties expend on legal representation. The allocation of resources across parties influences court decisions in two...

In academia, a subset of faculty has tenure, which allows its beneficiaries to retain their professorships without mandatory retirement and with only limited grounds for revocation. Proponents of tenure argue it protects intellectual freedom and encourages investment in human capital. Detractors...

Recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning have bolstered the predictive power of data analytics. Research tools based on these developments will soon be commonplace. For the past two years, the three of us have been working on a project called Blue J Legal. We started with...

This Essay explores which legal precedent judges choose to support their decision. When describing the legal landscape in a written opinion, which precedent do judges gravitate toward? We examine the idea that judges will gravitate toward citing “friendly” precedent. A friendly precedent,...