It is bedrock policy that the government can treat citizens and noncitizens differently. Virtually no one believes that noncitizens should have the right to vote or to run for office. Many noncitizens—including tourists, business people, and the spouses of certain visa holders—do not even have the right to work or… Read More »
Whether patients should be able to contract out of the malpractice system has been a hotly debated subject in law and economics and health law literature. Advocates of patient choice argue that if the cost of having the option to bring a malpractice suit truly outweighs the benefit to a… Read More »
Modern contract law is governed by a two-stage adjudicative regime—an inheritance of the centuries-old conflict between law and equity. Under this regime, formal contract terms are treated as prima facie provisions that courts can override by invoking equitable doctrines if they believe that doing so is necessary to “correct” the… Read More »
Private resolution and public adjudication of disputes are seen as discrete, antipodal processes. The essence of private resolution is that the parties can arrange disputed rights and entitlements without judicial intervention. In public adjudication, the sovereign mandates the substantive and procedural laws. This understanding is axiomatic in courthouses and academic… Read More »
Early one morning in January 1956, Herbert Simon announced to his graduate class at Carnegie Mellon that “[o]ver Christmas, Al Newell and I invented a thinking machine.” His claim was a bit premature, but Simon did win the Nobel Prize in Economics twenty-two years later—not for creating a sentient computer… Read More »
H.L.A. Hart, following others before him, draws our attention to the difference between duty-imposing and power-conferring rules. Duty-imposing rules require persons “to do or abstain from certain actions, whether they wish to or not.” The law of theft, for example, instructs persons not to steal, no matter what their personal… Read More »
In a fairly short period of time, arbitration agreements have migrated beyond their traditional domains, such as commercial transactions between sophisticated business entities, and have come to pervade the contemporary economy. A typical consumer might have agreed, though not necessarily consciously, to arbitrate disputes with his or her credit card… Read More »
Over ninety years ago, opponents of World War I alleged that “munitions manufacturers frighten the popular mind with the fear of imaginary external enemies and inflame it with murderous patriotism.” According to a view attributed to Stefan Zweig, the war began only when “newspapers in the pay of the arms manufacturers… Read More »
Below is a brief introduction to the Legal Workshop project. We hope you enjoy getting to know us, and we welcome your feedback.
Mission:
The Legal Workshop website provides a single online forum for cutting-edge legal scholarship from the top law journals in the country.
The Legal Workshop features… Read More »