The Topography of Civil Litigation and Plaintiff Attorneys’ Role
September 21, 2018

Civil law is enforced primarily via private litigation. One characteristic of private enforcement is that litigation levels...

A Rose by Any Other Name: Understanding Judicial Decisions that Do Not Cite Precedent
September 7, 2018

In common‐law countries, legal precedent serves as a foundation of judicial opinions. Judges cite precedent to explain their decision, and it is this use of precedent that threads one decision to another. The Supreme Court in India stands in contrast to its counterparts in other countries in that it annually decides not dozens, but thousands, of cases. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly half the Court's decisions do not cite any precedent at all. This article examines this phenomenon, specifically...

How Liability Insurers Protect Patients and Improve Safety
September 1, 2018

Forty years after the publication of the first systematic study of adverse medical events, there is greater access to information...

How Concepcion and Italian Colors Affected Terms of Service Contracts in the Gig Economy
August 20, 2018

This study examines whether companies in the gig economy altered their contract terms following two landmark Supreme Court...

OpenEDGAR: Open Source Software for SEC EDGAR Analysis
August 4, 2018

OpenEDGAR is an open source Python framework designed to rapidly construct research databases based on the Electronic Data...

Estimating Risk Preferences in the Field
July 29, 2018

We survey the literature on estimating risk preferences using field data. We concentrate our attention on studies in which...

An Empirical Study of Dispute Resolution Clauses in International Supply Contracts
July 25, 2018

International transactions present unique legal risks. When a contract touches several different nations, a party may not know where it will be called upon to defend a lawsuit or, alternatively, which nation’s law will be applied to resolve that dispute. To mitigate these risks, parties will often write dispute resolution provisions into their contracts. Arbitration clauses and forum selection clauses help to reduce uncertainty relating to forum. Choice-of-law clauses help to reduce uncertainty...

Do Checklists Work?
June 15, 2018

"Checklists" have long-endured as an inexpensive--and seemingly efficacious--way to reduce risk flowing from tasks requiring...

Chess Grandmasters Show the Same Longevity Advantage as Elite Athletes
June 10, 2018

It’s well established that elite athletes have a longer life expectancy than the general public. A recent review of over 50 studies comprising half a million people estimated the athletic advantage to be between 4 and 8 years, on average. This comes as little surprise. One can easily imagine how the same genetic endowment and training necessary to develop physical prowess in sport might also manifest in physical health. Now for the first time, a study published in PLOS One (open access) shows...

Medicare Secondary Payer and Settlement Delay
June 6, 2018

The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self‐insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further...