Knowledge about Legal Sanctions

Common Knowledge in Legal Reasoning about Evidence

It is shown how tools of argument analysis currently being developed in artificial intelligence can be applied to legal judgments about evidence based on common knowledge. Chains of reasoning containing generalizations and implicit premises that express common knowledge are modeled using argument diagrams and argumentation schemes. A controversial thesis is argued for. It is the thesis that suc...

Managing Reputation with Litigation: Why Legal Sanctions Can Work Better than Market Sanctions

A long-lived firm sells a good to a sequence of consumers, where the good’s quality imperfectly depends on the firm’s unobservable e§ort. To solve the moral hazard problem, the firm can promise to pay damages (formal sanctions) or facilitate reputational punishment (informal sanctions). Formal sanctions engender litigation costs and possible court error while informal sanctions involve ine¢cien...

Public Opinion Toward Legal Sanctions for Crimes of Violence

The Effectiveness of Legal Sanctions in Dealing with Drinking Drivers

Legal sanctions, whether administered by the courts or by State licensing agencies, NC central to deterrence-based policies for reducing alcohol-impaired driving. They are the punishments threatened in support of the law’s mandate. Examples are fines, license actions such as suspension and revocation, jail sentences, and alternatives such as community service. Deterrence theory posits that sanc...

Driver Behavior and Legal Sanctions: A Study of Deterrence