In their seminal 1972 article, "Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral," Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed proposed an analytic framework for comparing entitlements protected by property rules and liability rules. Their article has become one of the...

This chapter — to be included in Research Handbook on the Economics of Torts (Arlen ed., Kluwer, forthcoming 2012) — assesses economic rationales for punitive damages in light of contemporary empirics and doctrine. The primary economic rationale for supra-compensatory damages is optimal...

This paper, using the methods of literature analysis, theoretically inductive analysis, as well as cross-disciplinary approach, analyses the present conditions and problems of the application of ADR in specific areas in China, such as in the protection of consumers' rights and interests, the...

Issues of collective redress remain amongst the most controversial in Europe. Considerations of the Directorate General for Competition (DJ Comp) and the Directorate General for Health and Consumers (DJ Sanco) to introduce new legislation aimed at facilitating the enforcement of damage claims in...

This paper studies the combined effects of legal fees and legal expenses insurance. We use a litigation model to compare litigants' settlement decisions under a before-the-event insurance plus an hourly fee contract (BTE) and an after-the-event insurance plus a conditional fee contract (ATE)....

In this article, the authors analyse the Dutch Collective Settlement of Mass Damage Act (WCAM 2005) in light of the European developments concerning collective redress. Both the strong and weak points of the WCAM 2005 are discussed

A subtle shift has taken place in the mechanics of preemption, the doctrine that determines when federal law displaces state law. In the past, Congress was the leading actor, and courts and commentators focused almost exclusively on the precise wording of its statutory directives as a clue to...

Given the high levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and the likelihood of growing emissions in the future, even aggressive limits on greenhouse gas emissions might ultimately fail to prevent dangerous climate disruptions. To prepare for this risk, some scientists have started to...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 tackles many health care-related issues, but medical malpractice liability reform is not one of them. Despite being a perennial target of health care reform -- with accompanying assertions that a medical malpractice liability crisis is...

This essay, prepared for a book on the effect of regulatory, liability, and litigation inefficiencies on the global competitive position of the U.S., focuses on the role of the US federal system. We show that, although multiple US states offer significant potential for jurisdictional choice to...