One-dimensionality and stability in legislative voting

The widespread use in legislative studies of the one-dimensional model and its median-stability consequence raises a question: Do stability and one-dimensionality rest on evidence drawn from observed votes? They do not and cannot. I prove that every possible legislative history is compatible with a transitive majority preference (hence stability), and except in very special circumstances with a cyclic majority preference (hence instability) as well: observed votes can never refute and almost never confirm stability. One-dimensionality fares worse: any legislative history is compatible with the one-dimensional model if it includes no two votes with overlapping pairs of alternatives, but otherwise, I show, it is almost certainly incompatible with the model, even in those rare cases that ensure transitivity. Voting evidence aside, the one-dimensional model is unduly restrictive, and arguments in its defense do not survive scrutiny.     

Review essay / rights and responsibilities

Lloyd Weinreb, Oedipus at Fenway Park: What Rights There Are and Why There Are Any Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, viii, 221 pp.     

Contractual Interpretation,Registered Documents and Third Party Effects

This article considers whether extrinsic material should be available in interpreting registered documents when these may be contractual in nature or relate to contractual agreements. Many registers, for example the current scheme for recording land title, are intended to facilitate the reliance of third parties on their content, an objective that suggests that extrinsic material should be excluded. Such an approach, however, could itself cause unfairness and conflicts with the way that contractual documents are normally interpreted. Exploring this question leads us to consider the contextual approach to contractual interpretation generally and whether it should take account of the contemplated effects of contractual language on third parties. After concluding in the affirmative, we then ask whether this is sufficient as an approach to interpreting contractual documents entered into a register.