Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh Recent documents in Alexander Volokh en-us Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:21:40 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/45 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/45 Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:27:14 PST The standard view that "statutory interpretation matters" -- that different methods can "lead to" different result -- is hard to square with the standard rational-choice account of judicial decisionmaking. Indeed, under the standard model, it is not obvious why a judge should bother to even read the statute.I show, within the rational-choice account, how the judge can benefit from reading the statute when the preferences of legislators are uncertain. Doing so shows the judge what policy the legislators agreed to in the past, which gives him clues as to legislators' preferences today. Moreover, different assumptions about how the legislature can react to judicial decisions will alter the judge's decisionmaking.When an override simply takes the form of a "very large penalty" for the judge, he will in general deviate from his ideal point to the median of the distribution of legislators' preferences, in an effort to avoid being penalized.However, if an override takes the form of an actual change of policy, all overrides are not created equal. I show that some forms of legislative override do not encourage the judge to read the law, while, surprisingly, other forms of override do encourage the judge to read the law but can actually decrease the extent to which the judge follows the law. The structure of a legislative override thus has more complex effects on judicial behavior than has previously been understood.I also show that, when more than one possible meaning of the statute is available, depending on the method of statutory interpretation is available, some judges may gravitate toward one or the other method depending in part on their own ideology.Empirical work must therefore take care to distinguish between the political biases of judges who choose a particular interpretive method and the "true nature" of the method, or what opinions using the method would look like if all judges were constrained to use it. Alexander Volokh Administrative Law Economics Political Economy & Public Choice Legislation http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/44 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/44 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:00:13 PDT These are the materials for my course on privatization, and the draft for an eventual casebook. Alexander Volokh Prisons Law and Economics Privatization Constitutional Law Education http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/43 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/43 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:58:27 PDT School vouchers have been proposed as a way of bypassing the political pathologies of school reform and making schools better by transforming students and their parents into consumers. What if we did the same for prisons--instituted a system under which convicted criminals could choose which prison to go to rather than being assigned by a Department of Corrections bureaucrat?Voucherized prisons would continue to be "state actors" for pur-poses of the First, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments, so (unlike schools) a private voucherized prison wouldn't automatically be exempt from these constitutional requirements. However, it would probably have the ability to "offer" at least some "constitutionally noncompliant packages" that would be attractive to inmates, to the extent this is allowed under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. As for the Establishment Clause, religious prisons would probably be constitu-tional under Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which offers a way forward for faith-based prisons. Under both doctrines, the government probably needs to offer a "constitutionally compliant" spot for any inmate who wants one, either by direct public provision or by contract with private prisons.Would prison vouchers be a good idea? In the first place, one may ask whether prisoner choice would succeed in improving prisons from prisoners' perspective. The argument that it would is similar to the ar-gument as to schools, though this the case is arguably stronger as to prisons because prisoners would probably have fewer informational problems, the agency costs present in schooling choice are nonexistent, and peer effects are probably less significant. In the second place, one may ask whether, assuming this happened, it would be a good thing, since prisoners may have antisocial preferences. Even if prisons would compete along certain antisocial dimensions in ways that cannot be controlled by direct regulation, prison vouchers may still be a good idea as long as the prosocial competitive pressure (chiefly as to physical security, medical care, and job training) outweighs the antisocial pressure. Alexander Volokh Prisons Law and Economics Privatization Constitutional Law http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/41 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/41 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:43:10 PDT Alexander Volokh Regulation http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/40 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/40 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:40:15 PDT Alexander Volokh Regulation http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/39 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/39 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:38:44 PDT Alexander Volokh Environmental Law & Policy Property http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/38 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/38 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:35:54 PDT Alexander Volokh Regulation http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/37 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/37 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:33:21 PDT Alexander Volokh Environmental Law & Policy http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/36 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/36 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:22:56 PDT Alexander Volokh Regulation http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/35 http://works.bepress.com/alexander_volokh/35 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:19:38 PDT Response to the Harvard Law Record column by Cliff Ginn available at http://www.hlrecord.org/news/341145.html. Alexander Volokh Economics Law and Economics