Law and Economics

Everyone owes each other a duty of ordinary care—but what is “ordinary”? How does one act reasonably to meet this burden? This Comment analyzes the current reasonable person standard for disabled plaintiffs and the corresponding duty of “ordinary care” provided by defendants through a critical disability studies lens. The current system of tort law burdens disabled plaintiffs with accommodating themselves, rather than requiring defendants to include accessible care in meeting their duty of ordinary care. To make the distribution of accommodative labor more equitable, this Comment proposes three stackable changes: (1) courts should reinterpret defendants’ duty of ordinary care to include care of individuals with disabilities by eliminating the doctrine that tortfeasors owe accommodations to people with disabilities only if they are on notice of their disabilities; (2) courts could further shift the balance of accommodative labor by factoring the mental and physical cost of accommodating oneself into the reasonable care inquiry when the plaintiff is disabled; and (3) courts could eliminate comparative negligence for plaintiffs with disabilities to address the problematic “reasonable person with a disability” standard. This Comment also explores theoretical, doctrinal, and normative justifications while creating space for a more robust dialogue on how the law treats disability as “extra”—but not ordinary.

This Comment analyzes the entrance of institutional investors into the single-family rental market after the Great Recession of 2008. The collapse of the housing market during the Great Recession fundamentally changed the ownership structure of U.S. single-family homes. This post-recession reality has introduced a housing puzzle: the pricing trends of single-family rentals in the decade after the Great Recession suggest that institutional investors have captured monopolistic power over the single-family rental market despite owning a relatively small market share. Thus, this Comment evaluates the housing puzzle through the lens of antitrust law.

While a potential antitrust case appears to suffer from the critical weaknesses of low entry barriers and market shares, analyzing the institutional entrance into the single-family rental market under antitrust merger doctrine reveals that the case is stronger than it may initially seem. After evaluating the antitrust case, this Comment considers how the housing market can instruct antitrust doctrine’s further evolution, since commentators across academia, the media, and politics all criticize institutional entrance. By highlighting how unique market facts in housing obfuscate market power, this Comment suggests expanding the merger analysis to include not just levels and changes in concentration, but also orders of magnitude.

I argue for an economic approach to equal protection analysis that is grounded in the motivations of government actors but that addresses some of the longstanding concerns with intent-based tests. The examples of criminal deterrence and equal protection analysis are illustrative of an agenda for law and economics analysis that more incorporates other-regarding motives more generally.

This Article explores what it might mean in practice for agencies to incorporate distributive considerations into cost-benefit analysis. It uses, as a case study, a 2014 rule promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requiring new motor vehicles to have rearview cameras that reduce the risk of backover crashes.

Llacua is one of many shepherds who move to the United States for a few months each year with an H-2A visa to work on a ranch. The H-2A program allows U.S. employers to petition to hire foreign temporary agricultural workers, provided that the employers satisfy specific regulatory requirements.

Richard Posner is the most prolific federal judge and academic in the history of American law.