Mann Act Book Review and One Missed Deadline...

...or at least one that I am willing to acknowledge. But I will start with something completed, as foreshadowed in my previous nDrafts post: a book review of Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI by Jessica R. Pliley, available here. Further, the short paper on regulating cocaine has been completed, as has been the referee report on a paper concerning addiction. Oh, and yes, my reading commitment has been fulfilled, with The Parthenon Enigma, by Joan Breton Connelly, added to the "books promiscuously read" pile. OK, so I did manage to take care of a few loose ends in the last couple months.

As for the missed deadline, that refers to the revised version of a paper about the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum. The new (missed?) deadline is April 18. I'd also like to begin to at least muse over the paper for this fall on vice policy in Russia, and hmmm, what to read, what to read? How about The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt?

Law and Econ Project, Update XIII

Well, in at least one dimension, the recent plan has been fulfilled: I made it all the way through the nutshell series book on Law and Economics. Enjoyed it, too. The seemingly more pressing matter of completing my own book also has been accomplished, more or less, though not according to the detailed plan. Nonetheless, everything (except the Acknowledgements) is about ready to go. There will be some frantic last minute revising over the next week or two -- so I won't adopt any deadlines for reading -- but the final version should look pretty much like the current one. Not sure whether that is good or bad news.

I'll append the Table of Contents.  When I compare it with the version from 2.5 years ago, well, yes, changes (I hope improvements) have been made, but the similarities seem to dominate the differences. (Chapters 3, 4, and 5, largely are intact -- I wonder how much those intact sections themselves have been revised?) Hmmm. For my own edification, I'll put asterisks next to new or perhaps massively altered sections.

Concepts in Law and Economics: A Guide for the Curious

Jim Leitzel

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

             The Original of Laura

            Choice in the Shadow of the Law

 

Chapter 1: E pluribus unum

             Robin

            Efficiency

                        Jeremy Bentham

            The Art of the Deal

            Willingness-to-pay

            Why Maximize Aggregate Wellbeing?

                        *Just Compensation

            Common Law and Civil Law

            The Coase Theorem

            Establishing a Market to Erode Rent Controls

            The Coase Corollary

            More on Property Rights and Efficiency: The Tragedy of the Commons

            The Reverse of the Medal: Property Rights and the Anticommons

                        *An Aside on View Blocking

            *What Happens When a Property Right is Infringed?

 Chapter 2: Efficiency pluribus unum

 *The Sixty Minute Law School

*Property, Mostly a Reprise

            *Who Owns Meteorites?

            Contracts

            Expectation Damages and Efficient Breach

                        Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on Bad Men and the Law

            Accidents

            Strict Liability

            Negligence

            Crime

            *Purposes of Punishing Crime

Efficiency When?

            *Retribution?

Standards of Proof

 Chapter 3: What’s done is done?

             Bart and Lance

            Chicago Dibs

            Patents

                        Advance Market Commitments

            Preventive and Punitory Measures

            Firearm Regulation

                        John Stuart Mill

            Low Probability, High Punishment Regimes

            Destruction of Property: What’s Done Cannot Be Undone?

            Moral Rights: What’s Done Cannot Be Redone?

                        *Defacing or Improving?

            Intellectual Property: What’s Done Can Be Done Repeatedly

                        Public Goods

            Nabokov and Existence Value

 Chapter 4: Squeezing a balloon

             The Peltzman Effect

                        *Endangered Species

            Art Again: Resale Rights, or Droit de Suite

Using the Law to Serve Distributional Goals

            Squeezing Copyright

                        Creative Commons and Open Access

            The De Facto Liberalization of the Copyright Regime

            A World Without Copyright

Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

            Copyright Vacuums

                        Fashion Design

                        Comedy

            Squeezing Newspapers

                        Hyperlocal News

            Deflating Subsidies

 Chapter 5: Deorum injuriae Diis curae

             Low-cost Avoider or Insurer

            Products Liability

            Comparative Negligence

                        Foreseeable Misuse and Attractive Nuisance

            Mill and the Harm Principle

                        Pecuniary Externalities

            Blocked Exchanges

            Kidney Markets

                        The Iranian Kidney Transplant Program

            The Parthenon Marbles and Cultural Property

                        Statutes of Limitation and Adverse Possession

 

Chapter 6: Crooked timber

             Enforcing Contracts

                        Lochner v. New York (1905)

            Dealing with Uncertainty

            Unconscionability

            *Willpower Lapses

            The Endowment Effect

            Default Rules

            Organ Donations, Reprise

            *Selling Kidneys

            Vice, Rationality, and Defaults

            *Re-legalizing Drugs

                        *An Option to Commit to Opting Out: Self-Exclusion

            *Preventive and Punitory Measures, Again

            *A Happy Ending?

*Conclusions

References

*Glossary

Inauspicious Start

My goals for the past week were to make revisions to Chapter 2 and to prepare revisions for Chapter 3; plus, I hoped to make it halfway through American Property, by Stuart Banner. Things didn't quite work out as intended.

I have prepared but not finished making (that is, entering into the computer) revisions of Chapter 2; I did not look at Chapter 3. The Banner book is 291 pages of normal text, followed by many pages of notes, which I keep up with as I read the text. So to be halfway through, I would have to have read about 146 pages of the text. In truth, I have finished but 104 pages, about 35% done. So my plans were under-fulfilled for both reading and writing.

The good news is that I wrote a couple of short pieces on vice policy -- one on drugs, one on casino gambling. Not sure either of them will ever see the light of day, but I can derive a sense of accomplishment from such minor victories. I also returned to Chapter 1 and changed the Kaldor-Hicks material -- eliminating the use of the Kaldor-Hicks terminology -- and added a short section on willingness-to-pay. The Banner book also contributed to Chapter 1, in discussing the development of the law of takings. Specifically, when does the government have to pay compensation for a regulation that reduces the value of privately owned property? Banner gives a nice historical discussion of how this law developed.

At the end of the week I will be heading out of town, and will be beyond work for a week or so. I will try to check into nDrafts on Friday, then. What do I hope to have accomplished by then? Uh, how about finish entering those revisions to Chapter 2, plus make the Chapter 3 revisions? I'll aim to have 60% of the Banner book behind me at that point, too -- I already am scaling back my ambitions.