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Eric A. Posner

Bio: Eric A. Posner is an academic researcher from University of Chicago. The author has contributed to research in topics: International law & Human rights. The author has an hindex of 77, co-authored 377 publications receiving 16572 citations. Previous affiliations of Eric A. Posner include University of Michigan & Loyola Marymount University.


Papers
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Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: The role of law in a society in which order is maintained mostly through social norms, trust, and non-legal sanctions has been discussed in this article, where the authors argue that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that the law is critical to enhancing good social norms and undermining bad ones.
Abstract: What is the role of law in a society in which order is maintained mostly through social norms, trust, and non-legal sanctions? Eric Posner argues that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that the law is critical to enhancing good social norms and undermining bad ones. But he also argues that the proper regulation of social norms is a delicate and complex task, and that current understanding of social norms is inadequate for guiding judges and lawmakers. What is needed, and what this book offers, is a model of the relationship between law and social norms. The model shows that people's concern with establishing co-operative relationships leads them to engage in certain kinds of imitative behaviour. The resulting behavioural patterns are called social norms. Posner applies the model to several areas of law that involves the regulation of social norms, including laws governing gift-giving and non-profit organisations; family law; criminal law; laws governing speech, voting and discrimination; and contract law. Among the engaging questions posed are: would the legalisation of gay marriage harm traditional married couples? is it beneficial to shame criminals? why should the law reward those who make charitable contributions? would people vote more if non-voters were penalised? The author approaches these questions using the tools of game theory, but his arguments are simply stated and make no technical demands on the reader.

561 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A Theory of Customary International Law is a generalization of the theory of International Agreements, which is used in many of the works of the present paper, e.g.,.
Abstract: 1. Introduction PART I: CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW 2. A Theory of Customary International Law 3. Case Studies PART II: TREATIES 4. A Theory of International Agreements 5. Human Rights 6. International Trade PART III: RHETORIC, MORALITY, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 7. A Theory of International Rhetoric 8. International Law and Moral Obligation 9. Liberal Democracy and Cosmopolitan Duty 10. Conclusion

535 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that cost-benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure, and its most plausible defense is that use of cost- benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well-being than is use of alternative decision-procedures.
Abstract: Cost-benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics. The standard defense appeals to the Pareto standard or the Kaldor-Hicks standard, and assumes that agencies should respect people's actual preferences, as opposed to informed or otherwise restricted preferences. This paper argues that cost-benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure, and its most plausible defense is that use of cost-benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well-being than is use of alternative decision-procedures. The paper focuses on the problem of using cost-benefit analysis when preferences are "distorted." A person's preferences are distorted when their satisfaction does not enhance that person's well-being. Preferences typically thought to be distorted in this sense include disinterested preferences, uninformed preferences, adaptive preferences, and objectively bad preferences; further, preferences may be a poor guide to maximizing aggregate well-being when wealth is unequally distributed. We argue that government agencies currently recognize these problems but respond to them in an ad hoc way, and that a more systematic treatment of these problems is warranted. The paper describes conditions under which agencies should (or should not) correct for distorted preferences, for example, by constructing informed or non-adaptive preferences, discounting objectively bad preferences, and treating people differentially on the basis of wealth. Institutional and political constraints - the inability of agencies to make lump sum transfers, the need for transparency - are also considered.

293 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article argued that transitional justice is continuous with ordinary justice, and there is no reason to treat transitional-justice measures as presumptively suspect, on either moral or institutional grounds, since transitional justice has developed a range of pragmatic tools for managing transitions.
Abstract: Theorists of transitional justice study the transition measures used, or eschewed, by new democracies that succeed communist or authoritarian regimes - measures including trials, purges, lustration, reparations, and truth commissions. The theorists tend to oppose transitional measures, portraying them as illiberal and as a distraction from the task of consolidating new democracies. In this Article we argue against that view. The critics of transitional justice have gone wrong by overlooking that transitional measures are common in consolidated legal systems, which themselves constantly undergo political and economic shocks resulting in transitions of greater or lesser degree. Ordinary justice has developed a range of pragmatic tools for managing transitions. Consolidated democracies use trials, purges and reparations to accomplish valuable forward-looking goals without allowing illiberal repression; new democracies can and should use those tools also. Because transitional justice is continuous with ordinary justice, there is no reason to treat transitional-justice measures as presumptively suspect, on either moral or institutional grounds.

280 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract.
Abstract: This paper introduces an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract. Under this assumption courts cannot perform their normal function in standard economic analysis of contract law, where they deter opportunistic breach because they can verify the promisor's behavior. Nonetheless, the model shows that despite judicial incompetence people will voluntarily enter legally enforceable, jointly valuable contracts. The reason is that when parties care about their reputations, and are engaged in repeated interaction, they can deter certain forms of otherwise profitable opportunism by credibly threatening a mutually destructive lawsuit. The law, on this theory, generates value not by directly deterring bad behavior, but by supplying parties with the ability to retaliate when they are harmed. The paper explores the model's implications for understanding contracting and contract law.

272 citations


Cited by
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Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: The Mystery of Capital as discussed by the authors is one of the most influential books in the history of the world, and it has already led the cognoscenti to put him in the pantheon of great progressive intellectuals of our age.
Abstract: Why does capitalism triumph in the West but fail almost everywhere else? Elegantly, and with rare clarity, Hernando de Soto revolutionizes our understanding of what capital is and why it has failed to benefit four-fifths of mankind -- and explains the solution. 'A revolutionary book ...may not be in the class of Das Kapital, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Keynes's General Theory. But if the criteria for joining that exclusive club is a capacity not only to change permanently the way we look at the world, but also to change the world itself, then there are good grounds for thinking that this book is surely a contender.' Donald Macintyre, The Independent 'Few people in Britain have heard of Hernando de Soto ...but The Mystery of Capital has already led the cognoscenti to put him in the pantheon of great progressive intellectuals of our age.' Mark Leonard, New Statesman 'A crucial contribution. A new proposal for change that is valid for the whole world' - Javier Perez de Cuellar (Former Secretary United Nations)

5,019 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of the authors' brain’s wiring.
Abstract: In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

4,351 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: McQueen et al. as mentioned in this paper presented a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby.
Abstract: Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

1,813 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
07 Mar 2008-Science
TL;DR: The results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation, and that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment.
Abstract: We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.

1,705 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: More recently, this article reviewed more than 60 studies of mortality risk premiums from ten countries and approximately 40 studies that present estimates of injury risk premiums, and concluded that an income elasticity of the value of a statistical life from about 0.5 to 0.6 was found.
Abstract: A substantial literature over the past thirty years has evaluated tradeoffs between money and fatality risks. These values in turn serve as estimates of the value of a statistical life. This article reviews more than 60 studies of mortality risk premiums from ten countries and approximately 40 studies that present estimates of injury risk premiums. This critical review examines a variety of econometric issues, the role of unionization in risk premiums, and the effects of age on the value of a statistical life. Our meta-analysis indicates an income elasticity of the value of a statistical life from about 0.5 to 0.6. The paper also presents a detailed discussion of policy applications of these value of a statistical life estimates and related issues, including risk-risk analysis.

1,556 citations