The strategic inconsistency of Paretian liberalism

In this paper, the problem of the Paretian liberal is cast as a preference revelation game whose outcome function satisfies Gibbard's libertarian condition and strong Pareto optimality. Strategic consistency requires that the equilibrium of the game agree with the sincere outcome. It is shown that, whether viewed in a cooperative or non-cooperative context, the liberal social choice function is strategically inconsistent. This result suggests that, from a strategic standpoint, a different resolution of the liberal paradox is desirable.     

Biographing Realist Jurisprudence

This essay reexamines realist jurisprudence through a review of two biographies of leading realists: Dalia Tsuk Mitchell's Architect of Justice: Felix Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism (2007), and Spencer Waller's Thurman Arnold: A Biography (2005). The essay argues that when biographies of legal realists are considered alongside their academic writing, a more robust jurisprudence emerges. Realist lives crystallize the intuition that the major innovation of legal realism was not, as generally assumed, its attitude toward judges and adjudication. Instead, realist jurisprudence is an institutionalist view of law with a focus on groups rather than individuals. Realist jurisprudence understands courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, and nongovernmental groups as important loci of law, lawmaking, and legal reasoning.     

Cognitive information levels,voter preferences,and local partisan political activity: A field experimental study on the effects of timing and order of message presentation

This article is based upon a factorial design field experiment conducted during the 1980 election campaign. The experiment was conducted to assess whether there is an optimal message strategy available to local party workers in their efforts to inform and persuade voters. The study assesses whether the timing of communications, i.e., near or distant to election day, and the order of message presentation, i.e., whether presenting important information early or late in a communication, have any effects upon voters' information levels and electoral decisions. The analysis supports an interpretation of recency effects, i.e., information presented last in a partisan appeal was more likely to facilitate information and persuasion effects than information positioned first. However, this finding was conditioned upon the timing of message presentation with appeals referencing familiar partisan material only effective near to election day and appeals referencing less familiar and nonpartisan material only effective further from election day.