As a number of modern sexual misconduct cases demonstrate, often there are multiple charges against a single individual under circumstances in which the proof of an individual charge may fall short of the required standard of proof, but in which it is clear – overwhelmingly, or beyond a reasonable doubt – that at least one of the charges is true, even if we cannot be sure which one. Building on earlier work by myself and Richard Zeckhauser, by Alon Harel and Ariel Porat, and by Ariel Porat and Eric Posner, among others, this paper, prepared for the World Congress on Evidential Reasoning at the University of Girona, offers a sympathetic examination of sanction imposition – in and out of formal legal proceedings – on the basis of aggregate probabilities, and addresses a series of common objections. And the paper suggests that the greatest value of aggregating low (or lower) probability charges may be greatest outside of the official judicial process. It hints as well, although inconclusively, at the larger question of why the law focuses on acts when it is imposing sanctions, rather than focusing on the actors who may have committed those acts.
Virtue jurisprudence is an approach to normative legal theory that answers normative questions about law from a perspective that is centred on the...
This Article develops a new way of understanding the law in order to address contemporary debates about judicial practice and reform. The...
A large segment of the political left identifies as “progressive,” but what does a belief in progress entail? This short essay, written for a...
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Constitutional theory is a mess. Disagreements about originalism and living constitutionalism have become intractable. Constitutional theorists make...
Moore v. United States raises the question whether unrealized gains, such as an increase in property value or a stock portfolio, constitute “incomes...
“Dignity” is a rallying cry of social and political movements worldwide. It also appears in legal doctrine and scholarship. But the meaning of dignity...
Although ethical critiques of markets are longstanding, modern academic debates about the “moral limits of markets” (MLM) tend to be fairly limited in...
Many analyses of law take an unsentimental, perhaps even cynical view of regulated actors. On this view, law is a necessity borne of people’s selfish...
How should judges decide hard cases involving rights conflicts? Standard debates about this question are usually framed in jurisprudential terms...
This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The...
At first blush, the debate between Stanley Fish and Ronald Dworkin that took place over the course of the 1980s and early 90s seems to have produced...
Across multiple national surveys sampling more than 12,000 people, we have found that a majority of Americans, more than 60 percent, consider false...
Given that no two acts, events, situations, and legal cases are identical, precedential constraint necessarily involves determining which two...
This chapter examines the intellectual and social contexts in which the American Law Institute (ALI) has operated and how they have influenced the...
Sometimes a police officer can only stop a fleeing suspect by striking or shooting him. When is it morally justified to use such force rather than let...