University of Pennsylvania Law Review articles from June 1998

University of Pennsylvania Law Review archives from June 1998

The strategic basis of principled behavior: a critique of the incommensurability thesis.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,...

Instrumental commensurability.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... What is commensurability, and what is incommensurability? Although the topic of commensurability has been discussed extensively by philosophers, lawyers, and others for more than two decades,(1) the typical discussion of commensurability is an...

An expressive theory of contract: from feminist dilemmas to a reconceptualization of rational choice in contract law.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION How do people choose? This question figures prominently in essentially any field that places human behavior within its province. Choice is a way of describing human action; we can always look at how one has behaved and...

Does incommensurability matter? Incommensurability and public policy.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... Reasons are incommensurable when, and only when, they cannot be compared as better, worse, or equally good.(1) Incommensurability so conceived is relevant to choosing public policy because it is a barrier to realizing the following ideal: In...

Million-dollar mountains: prices, sanctions, and the legal regulation of collective social and environmental goods.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Imagine a world where every aspect of the natural environment is up for cash sale or lease. Imagine that every lake and river, every environmental good, even those held in collective ownership, is freely exchangeable for...

Incommensurability and cost-benefit analysis.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Cost-benefit analysis is a flourishing practice, desperately in need of a justification. By "cost-benefit analysis," or "CBA," I mean the monetized version: the version where the various benefits and costs of a...

Incommensurability, welfare economics, and the law.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... In the philosophical literature on values and practical reason, a debate has arisen over the thesis that certain goods or values are incommensurable.(1) This raises an obvious question for legal scholars: Would this thesis, if true, have...

Incommensurable choices and the problem of moral ignorance.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... If I cannot decide between A and B, that would seem to show that I am indifferent between them. But as Joseph Raz famously demonstrated in The Morality of Freedom(1) it does not show that at all. His demonstration basically consisted of...

Law, incommensurability, and conceptually sequenced argument.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... I. DIFFERENT PROCEDURES FOR PLURALISTIC CHOICE Suppose that a law school committee is charged with the task of awarding entrance scholarships to incoming first-year law students. Applicants for the scholarships are to be assessed on the...

Incommensurable goods, rightful lies, and the wrongness of fraud.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... Lies that alter the course of a negotiation often constitute fraud,(1) but not always. Successful lies that a person tells about her reservation price in a negotiation, for example, need not be actionable.(2) The legal acceptability of such...

Comparison and the justification of choice.(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... Suppose two alternatives are incomparable. Does it follow that there can be no justified choice between them? Conventional wisdom has it that the comparability of alternatives is necessary for the possibility of justified choice. After all, if...

No best answer?(Symposium: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION In the late 1960s, Ronald Dworkin first advanced the controversial claim that there is a right answer to every legal question.(1) Debate over this claim generally has focused on the question of judicial obligation in "hard...

Banishing the bogey of incommensurability. (response to articles by Ruth Chang and Lewis A. Kornhauser in this issue, p. 1569, 1599)(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... I have two major worries whenever I am asked to comment on others' articles. The first is that I will know nothing about the subject, which, given the large number of subjects I know nothing about, is highly likely. The second is that I will...

Dealing with incommensurability for dessert and desert: comments on Chapman and Katz. (response to articles by Bruce Chapman and Leo Katz in this issue, p. 1487, 1465)(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... Incommensurability is the claim that different choices, or different values underlying choices, cannot be measured on a single metric.(1) The related, but different claim of incomparability is that there are items or choices of which it cannot...

Saving Overton Park: A comment on environmental values. (response to articles by Jason Scott Johnston and Richard Warner in this issue, p. 1327, 1287)(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... To date, cost-benefit analysis has played only a secondary role in environmental law. Instead, regulations typically give a higher priority to environmental values than to monetary costs.(1) This refusal to count environmental values as fully...

Law, incommensurability, and expression. (response to articles by Gillian K. Hadfield and Alan Strudler in this issue, p. 1235, 1529).(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... One of the great merits of this Symposium has been to identify and clarify the important distinction between the concepts of incommensurability and incomparability. Broadly speaking, the distinction reflects that between cardinal and ordinal...

Dangers of monetary commensurability: a psychological game model of contagion. (response to articles by Matthew Adler and Richard Craswell in this issue, p. 1371, 1419).(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... I traded fame for love Without a second thought It all became a silly game Some things cannot be bought(1) INTRODUCTION Matthew Spitzer recently wrote: "One who is to write a comment on a well-done piece has two...

Incommensurability: truth or consequences. (response to articles by Eric A.Posner and Frederick Schauer in this issue, p. 1185, 1215)(Symposium Comments: Law and Incommensurability)
June 1, 1998... Frederick Schauer wants to bypass the question of whether the "incommensurability thesis" is true.(1) His question is whether it would be good to believe the thesis along some nonepistemic dimension (such as whether it is utility-maximizing)....