Overconfidence Can Be Transmitted From Person To Person
Emma Young, BPS Research Digest
There will always be some people within a group who are more confident than others. But some groups as a whole tend towards modesty — as with the !Kung hunters of the Kalahari Desert, for example, who deliberately downplay their own achievements and efforts. However, the opposite can also occur — and widespread overconfidence can of course become a problem, as with the US energy company Enron, whose “culture of arrogance” ultimately led to its downfall. These two examples...

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What is an Appropriate Measure of Litigation? Quantification, Qualification and Differentiation of Dispute Resolution
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, SSRN
This article reviews the claims about rates of litigation in the United States, as either “too much” or “too little” (e.g. “The Vanishing Trial”). While we need to understand aggregate litigation rates to assess access to justice, it may be more important to understand litigation rates in the context of differentiated case types. Litigation, in some cases, produces too “brittle” (binary) or costly outcomes, which is what led to the American “A” (alternative/appropriate) Dispute...

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Inazu on Reasonableness
Lawrence Solum, Legal Theory Blog
John D. Inazu (Washington University in St. Louis - School of Law) has posted Beyond Unreasonable (Nebraska Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: The concept of “reasonableness” permeates the law: the “reasonable person” determines the outcome of torts and contracts disputes, the criminal burden of proof requires factfinders to conclude “beyond a reasonable doubt;” claims of self-defense succeed or fail on reasonableness determinations But as any first-year...

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