China's Courts: Restricted Reform

The states, Congress, or the courts: who will be first to reform ERISA remedies?

Curtis Rooney's article reviews the ERISA law and it relationship to managed care. The piece continues with a review of the relevant preremption provisions and a extentivsive discussion of related U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The author discusses malpractice and design liabilities. The article concludes with a discussion of reform initiatives directed toward the ERISA preemption and damage pro...

The hazards of piecemeal reform: british civil courts and the credit market in colonial India

The colonial experience of developing countries provides valuable evidence regarding the impact of legal and institutional innovations on economic growth. However, there has been little effort by economists to study colonial policies to gain theoretical insights into the process of institutional reform. This paper considers the introduction of civil courts in colonial India and its impact on ag...

Status Courts

Courts II

I intuitively agree with Segal and Spaeth's conclusion that Supreme Court justices are guided in their decision-making by their personal beliefs and attitudes. For one thing, if jurists ideological beliefs were not important, the party of the president who nominated a justice would not matter, which seems clearly at odds with the facts. I also acknowledge the difficulties the authors face in at...

The Verdict on Drug Courts and Other Problem-Solving Courts

Scientists, in contrast, rarely speak of verdicts. To the scientist, virtually all conclusions are provisional and subject to revision as new data become available. Much of what is believed to be true turns out, after the collection of more information, to be only partially true, conditionally true, or sometimes outright false.1 It is, therefore, most prudent to withhold final judgment until al...