Private Enforcement Of Law Research Articles

The Fugitive: Evidence on Public versus Private Law Enforcement from Bail Jumping

On the day of their trial, a substantial number of felony defendants fail to appear. Public police have the primary responsibility for pursuing and rearresting defendants who were released on their own recognizance or on cash or government bail. Defendants who made bail by borrowing from a bond dealer, however, must worry about an entirely different pursuer. When a defendant who has borrowed money skips trial, the bond dealer forfeits the bond unless the fugitive is soon returned. As a result, bond dealers have an incentive to monitor their charges and ensure that they do not skip. When a defendant does skip, bond dealers hire bounty hunters to return the defendants to custody. We compare the effectiveness of these two different systems by examining failure‐to‐appear rates, fugitive rates, and capture rates of felony defendants who fall under the various systems. We apply propensity score and matching techniques.

Private law enforcement in post-communist Southeastern Europe: An economic analysis of arbitration and execution

The very idea of private law enforcement is alien in Southeastern Europe and appears there to be perceived as somewhat extravagant. A thoroughgoing search for the reasons of an extremely limited scope of the private law enforcement is undertaken in the paper. Private law enforcement is seen as taking three basic forms: self-enforcement, enforcement through other agents and illegal means and through specialized agents and with reliance on legal means. Particularly extensive is the analysis of arbitrage, both domestic and international, and of the causes of its modest deployment. Several possible causes are examined to some detail: the lack of knowledge both generally and in the sense of the lacking awareness of the possibility to find recourse to arbitrage, the shortage of lowers and the inadequacy of legal advice, distrust in courts, the preference for secrecy combined with partly operating in the realm of the gray economy, the missing of appellate proceedings and the shortfall in execution. Various factors influence the market share of arbitrage in the mass of litigations through various mechanisms and to a significantly differentiated degree. The paper centers on the various, sufficiently numerous components of these mechanisms. The stress is placed upon the still subdued power of reputation capital due mostly to a highly unstable macroeconomic situation, weakly and recently institutionalized property relations and, as a consequence, short decision making horizon. A new law enforcement mechanism, based on notaries as specific private enforcers and emerging in Croatia, is surveyed with an account of its advantages and disadvantages.

Holes in the Safety Net? State Liability and the Need for Private Law Enforcement

Following Francovich and Bonifaci v Italy[1991] it was widely considered that State Liability would be an enforcement mechanism that would end the problems the European Court of Justice (ECJ) had contended with through its battle over the adoption or denial of Horizontal Direct Effect of Directives (HDE). In the subsequent years it has been demonstrated that the debate for and against HDE's adoption has continued. This has been due in part to the limitations of State Liability as an effective enforcement mechanism which provides individuals not with their rights, but rather a damages action against the State. This article critiques State Liability and demonstrates the severe limitations which this enforcement mechanism has for those who wish to avail themselves of EC rights denied to them. Such limitations include the piecemeal nature of this method of enforcement; whether cases, particularly from employment law issues, should be heard against the State or the employer causing the problem complained of; and the nature of an enforcement mechanism based on the award of damages. It concludes by analysing this evidence as to whether State Liability is an adequate alternative to HDE, and hence should the enforcement of EC law be brought back from a public law action to the private sphere.

Transformace, reforma a třetí cesta

The command economy that the Czech Republic inherited from the communist system was considered unreformable. It seems as if the social and economic transition of ex-communist countries is necessary for their full inclusion among democratic countries with highly developed market economic systems. No new central European tiger has emerged since Erhard"s reform in the post-war West Germany, since welfare-statism also destroyed a genuine economic transition in the Czech Republic. Influential interest groups were able to interrupt the transition process and to stop it halfway in many areas. Political pressures to bring the Czech Republic closer to European Union's standards led to the passing of laws and government measures that were incompatible with the highly-regarded transition strategy. The development of public law at the expense of private law enforcement (in accordance with EU policy) led to the further expansion of bazaar capitalism in the Czech Republic.

Book Review: Women in Public and Private Law Enforcement

Book Review: Women in Public and Private Law Enforcement

Who Should Guard the Guardians? A New Approach for Monitoring Class Action Lawyers

Class actions have come to play a significant role in American legal system. Law enforcement is no longer left to the state alone, as private pursuit of self interest is harnessed to promote the common good. But private law enforcement has also had its down sides. Lawyers' gain has often come at the price of class members' loss, and misalignment of interests has many times resulted in less compensation and deterrence and more private attorney profits than desired. The question therefore has been how to guarantee that lawyers pursue their self interest yet leave society at large and class members in particular as well off as possible. This paper analyzes the different monitoring schemes that have been unsuccessfully applied in class actions, namely, monitoring by courts and by class members. Building on this analysis it then proposes a workable alternative: private monitoring by self interested individuals and organizations, not necessarily class members, who would compete and pay to obtain the monitoring position, and would receive a share of the class recovery in return.

Private Law Enforcement in Norwegian History: The Husband's Right to Chastise His Wife

(2002). Private Law Enforcement in Norwegian History: The Husband's Right to Chastise His Wife. Scandinavian Journal of History: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 19-29.

Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government

This article analyzes public and private law enforcement when the government is motivated by rent seeking. A rent-seeking government seeks primarily to maximize revenue. The article concludes as follows: (1) if offenders have sufficient wealth, a rent-seeking government is more aggressive than a social-welfare-maximizing government in enforcing laws against minor crimes (such as parking violations) but more lax in enforcing laws against major crimes; (2) competitive private enforcement is usually better and never worse than monopolistic private enforcement; (3) The choice between competitive private enforcement and public enforcement depends on which is cheaper and on the severity of the offense. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Private Monitoring in Common Fund Class Actions

Class actions have come to play a significant role in American legal system. Law enforcement is no longer left to the state alone, as private pursuit of self interest is harnessed to promote the common good. But private law enforcement has also had its down sides. Lawyers' gain has often come at the price of class members' loss, and misalignment of interests has many times resulted in less compensation and deterrence and more private attorney profits than desired. The question therefore has been how to guarantee that lawyers pursue their self interest yet leave society at large and class members in particular as well off as possible. This paper analyzes the different monitoring schemes that have been unsuccessfully applied in class actions, namely, monitoring by courts and by class members. Building on this analysis it then proposes a workable alternative: private monitoring by self interested individuals and organizations, not necessarily class members, who would compete and pay to obtain the monitoring position, and would receive a share of the class recovery in return.

Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government

The article analyzes public and private law enforcement when the government is motivated partially or entirely by rent-seeking. The model compares and contrasts the optimal law enforcement policies chosen by a benevolent, social welfare-maximizing government and a self-interested, rent-seeking government. The principal difference between these two kinds of governments is that a rent-seeking government seeks primarily to maximize revenue, while a welfare-maximizing government seeks primarily to deter socially harmful behavior. Among the central results of the paper are: (1) If offenders have sufficient wealth, a rent-seeking government is more aggressive in enforcing laws against minor crimes, while it is more lax in enforcing laws against major crimes. (2) Whether the government's objective is welfare maximization, rent maximization, or some combination of the two, competitive private enforcement is always at least as good and usually better than monopolistic private enforcement. (3) The choice between competitive private enforcement and public enforcement depends on which is cheaper and on whether the government seeks to completely deter offenses.

A note on private enforcement and type-I error

It is a common belief that private law enforcement leads to more nonoffenders being charged as a consequence of profit maximization. In this note we argue that monopolistic enforcement leads in many circumstances to underdetection and less accuracy. The use of a monetary sanction (subsidy) to penalize (compensate) the monopolistic enforcement agency when a charged individual is set free solves the problem.

Efficient Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law

OUR present legal institutions combine elements of private and public enforcement of law. If someone breaks your arm you call a policeman; if he breaks a window or a contract, you call a lawyer. Becker and Stigler have suggested that it would be advantageous to extend private enforcement into the area where law is now enforced publicly.' Their central argument is that the public system has perverse incentives. Suppose a policeman has evidence that will convict me of an offense, the punishment for which is equivalent (to me) to a twenty thousand dollar fine. If the cost to the policeman of "losing" the evidence is anything less than twenty thousand dollars, an opportunity exists for a mutually beneficial transaction. Preventing such transactions is costly. The solution proposed by Becker and Stigler is for the policeman's salary to consist of the fines produced by his activity. The only bribe he would then be willing to take would be one at least as large as the fine, in which case the "bribe" is simply a way of collecting the fine while avoiding the cost of a trial. In such a system the "policeman" is essentially a private agent. Becker and Stigler envisage a system of private enforcement firms that support themselves by the fines they collect from the criminals they apprehend and convict. If the criminal is judgment proof, the state would provide a reward equal to the fine the criminal would have paid if payment could have been enforced.

Optimal Sanctions for Antitrust Violations

Although economic analysis of the common law, crime, and legal decision making are relatively recent areas of research in the field of law and economics, economic analysis of antitrust, particularly the analysis of business practices described in antitrust cases, has been widespread and uncontroversial for many years. What has received less attention is the use of economics to examine antitrust enforcement itself.' This involves analyzing, for example, what is an antitrust injury, the appropriate sanctions for such an injury, the choice between public and private enforcement of antitrust laws and related questions on standing to sue, and the relevance of the antitrust victim's conduct to his ability to recover damages. In this paper I apply economics to some of the above issues. Economic analysis of antitrust enforcement builds on the pioneering papers of Gary Becker and Ronald Coase.2 Becker's paper was the first formal analysis of optimal penalties and probabilities of apprehension and conviction for criminal offenses. He showed

The Economics of Bail Jumping

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Economics of Bail JumpingSamuel L. Myers, Jr.Samuel L. Myers, Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Legal Studies Volume 10, Number 2Jun., 1981 Sponsored by The University of Chicago Law School Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/467687 Views: 24Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1981 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jake Monaghan, Eric Joseph van Holm, Chris W. Surprenant Get Jailed, Jump Bail? The Impacts of Cash Bail on Failure to Appear and re-Arrest in Orleans Parish, American Journal of Criminal Justice 47, no.11 (Nov 2020): 56–74.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09591-9Aurelie Ouss, Megan Stevenson Evaluating the Impacts of Eliminating Prosecutorial Requests for Cash Bail, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2019).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3335138Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, Crystal S. Yang The Effects of Pre-Trial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges, American Economic Review 108, no.22 (Feb 2018): 201–240.https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161503Brian Johnson, Christopher Kierkus, Christine Yalda Who Skips? An Analysis of Bail Bond Failure to Appear, Journal of Applied Security Research 9, no.11 (Jan 2014): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/19361610.2014.852005DAVID S. ABRAMS, CHRIS ROHLFS OPTIMAL BAIL AND THE VALUE OF FREEDOM: EVIDENCE FROM THE PHILADELPHIA BAIL EXPERIMENT, Economic Inquiry 49, no.33 (Apr 2010): 750–770.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00288.xThomas J. Miles An Empirical Analysis of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5, no.22 (Jun 2008): 275–308.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2008.00125.xThomas H. Cohen Commercial Surety Bail and the Problem of Missed Court Appearances and Pretrial Detention, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2008).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1130964Steven D. Levitt, Thomas J. Miles Chapter 7 Empirical Study of Criminal Punishment, (Jan 2007): 455–495.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-0730(07)01007-9Boon-Tiong Lim, Euston Quah, Khye-Chong Tan The Economics of Bail Setting and Social Welfare, International Review of Law and Economics 25, no.44 (Dec 2005): 592–603.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irle.2005.12.005 By Thomas J. Miles Estimating the Effect of America's Most Wanted: A Duration Analysis of Wanted Fugitives Miles, The Journal of Law and Economics 48, no.11 (Jul 2015): 281–306.https://doi.org/10.1086/428718 Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok The Fugitive: Evidence on Public versus Private Law Enforcement from Bail Jumping Helland/Tabarrok, The Journal of Law and Economics 47, no.11 (Jul 2015): 93–122.https://doi.org/10.1086/378694Samuel L. Myers Nea Presidential Address: Political Economy, Race, and Morals, The Review of Black Political Economy 18, no.11 (Jul 2018): 5–15.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02717881

Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case

Iceland is known to men as a land of volcanoes, geysers and glaciers. But it ought to be no less interesting to the student of history as the birthplace of a brilliant literature in poetry and prose, and as the home of a people who have maintained for many centuries a high level of intellectual cultivation. It is an almost unique instance of a community whose culture and creative power flourished independently of any favouring material conditions, and indeed under conditions in the highest degree unfavourable. Nor ought it to be less interesting to the student of politics and laws as having produced a Constitution unlike any other whereof records remain, and a body of law so elaborate and complex, that it is hard to believe that it existed among men whose chief occupation was to kill one another.

Adjudication as a Private Good

This paper examines the question whether adjudication can be viewed as a private good, i.e., one whose optimal level will be generated in a free market. Part I focuses on private courts, noting their limitations as institutions for dispute resolution and rule creation but also stressing the important role that the private court, in its various manifestations, has played both historically and today. Part II discusses a recent literature which has argued that the rules generated in the public court system, in areas of the law where the parties to litigation are private individuals or firms and the rules of law are judge-made, are the efficient products of purely private inputs. Our analysis suggests that this literature has overstated the tendency of a common law system to produce efficient rules, although areas can be identified where such a tendency can indeed be predicted on economic grounds. Viewed as a contribution to the emergent literature on the positive economic theory of law, our finding that the public courts do not automatically generate efficient rules is disappointing, since it leaves unexplained the mechanisms by which such rules emerge as they seem to have done in a number of the areas of Anglo-American judge-made law. However, our other major finding, that the practices and law governing private adjudication appear to be strongly influenced by economic considerations and explicable in economic terms, is evidence that economic theory has a major role to play in explaining fundamental features of the legal system.

Bail Risk: A Multivariate Analysis

Previous articleNext article No AccessBail Risk: A Multivariate AnalysisStevens H. Clarke, Jean L. Freeman, and Gary G. KochStevens H. Clarke Search for more articles by this author , Jean L. Freeman Search for more articles by this author , and Gary G. Koch Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Legal Studies Volume 5, Number 2Jun., 1976 Sponsored by The University of Chicago Law School Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/467556 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 26Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1977 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, Crystal S. Yang The Effects of Pre-Trial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges, American Economic Review 108, no.22 (Feb 2018): 201–240.https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161503DEAN A. DABNEY, JOSHUA PAGE, VOLKAN TOPALLI American Bail and the Tinting of Criminal Justice, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 56, no.44 (Jul 2017): 397–418.https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12212Gary G. Koch, Dennis B. Gillings Inference, Design‐Based vs . Model‐Based, (Sep 2014).https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118445112.stat01616Brian Johnson, Christopher Kierkus, Christine Yalda Who Skips? An Analysis of Bail Bond Failure to Appear, Journal of Applied Security Research 9, no.11 (Jan 2014): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/19361610.2014.852005DAVID S. ABRAMS, CHRIS ROHLFS OPTIMAL BAIL AND THE VALUE OF FREEDOM: EVIDENCE FROM THE PHILADELPHIA BAIL EXPERIMENT, Economic Inquiry 49, no.33 (Apr 2010): 750–770.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00288.xMariana Martinez, Fabio Sánchez, Holly Kosiewicz Is Justice Blind? An Examination of Disparities in Homicide Sentencing in Colombia, 1980-2000, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2009).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1478170Gary G. Koch, Dennis B. Gillings Inference, Design-Based vs. Model-Based, (Sep 2008).https://doi.org/10.1002/9780471462422.eoct995Thomas J. Miles An Empirical Analysis of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5, no.22 (Jun 2008): 275–308.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2008.00125.xSteven D. Levitt, Thomas J. Miles Chapter 7 Empirical Study of Criminal Punishment, (Jan 2007): 455–495.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-0730(07)01007-9Gary G. Koch, Dennis B. Gillings Inference, Design-Based vs. Model-Based, (Aug 2006).https://doi.org/10.1002/0471667196.ess1235.pub2Boon-Tiong Lim, Euston Quah, Khye-Chong Tan The Economics of Bail Setting and Social Welfare, International Review of Law and Economics 25, no.44 (Dec 2005): 592–603.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irle.2005.12.005Mandeep K. Dhami From discretion to disagreement: explaining disparities in judges' pretrial decisions, Behavioral Sciences & the Law 23, no.33 (Jan 2005): 367–386.https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.619 By Thomas J. Miles Estimating the Effect of America's Most Wanted: A Duration Analysis of Wanted Fugitives Miles, The Journal of Law and Economics 48, no.11 (Jul 2015): 281–306.https://doi.org/10.1086/428718 Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok The Fugitive: Evidence on Public versus Private Law Enforcement from Bail Jumping Helland/Tabarrok, The Journal of Law and Economics 47, no.11 (Jul 2015): 93–122.https://doi.org/10.1086/378694Hindy Lauer Schachter Supervised Pretrial Release: Policy Issues That Must Be Explored to Create Appropriate Programs, Criminal Justice Policy Review 7, no.3-43-4 (Sep 1995): 255–274.https://doi.org/10.1177/088740349500700303JOHN S. GOLDKAMP, PETER R. JONES Pretrial Drug-Testing Experiments in Milwaukee and Prince George's County: The Context of Implementation, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 29, no.44 (Aug 2016): 430–465.https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427892029004003Mary A. Toborg, Anthony M.J. Yezer, John A. Carver Pretrial Urine-Testing in the District of Columbia: Its Usefulness for Risk Classification and as a “Signaling Device” for Release Risk, Journal of Drug Issues 21, no.22 (Apr 1991): 369–381.https://doi.org/10.1177/002204269102100208Celesta A. Albonetti, Robert M. Hauser, John Hagan, Ilene H. Nagel Criminal justice decision making as a stratification process: The role of race and stratification resources in pretrial release, Journal of Quantitative Criminology 5, no.11 (Mar 1989): 57–82.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066261 John R. Lott, Jr. Should the Wealthy Be Able to "Buy Justice"?, Journal of Political Economy 95, no.66 (Oct 2015): 1307–1316.https://doi.org/10.1086/261517William Rhodes A survival model with dependent competing events and right-hand censoring: Probation and parole as an illustration, Journal of Quantitative Criminology 2, no.22 (Jun 1986): 113–137.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01074576Elizabeth M. Suval, Matthew T. Zingraff Should Pre-Trial Release Programs Be Expanded?, Criminal Justice Policy Review 1, no.22 (May 1986): 140–154.https://doi.org/10.1177/088740348600100202Ebbe B. Ebbesen, Vladimir J. Konečni Criticisms of the criminal justice system: A decision making analysis, Behavioral Sciences & the Law 3, no.22 (Dec 2013): 177–194.https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2370030206Frances P. Bernat Gender Disparity in the Setting of Bail, Journal of Offender Counseling Services Rehabilitation 9, no.1-21-2 (Oct 2008): 21–47.https://doi.org/10.1300/J264v09n01_02Ebbe B. Ebbesen, Vladimir J. Konečni Criticisms of the criminal justice system: A decision making analysis, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 3, no.22 (Jan 1985): 177–194.https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6696(1985)3:2<177::AID-JHBS2300030206>3.0.CO;2-C References, (Jan 1984): 399–409.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-627180-5.50028-5 Samuel L. Myers, Jr. The Economics of Bail Jumping, The Journal of Legal Studies 10, no.22 (Oct 2015): 381–396.https://doi.org/10.1086/467687

The Private Enforcement of Law

The Private Enforcement of Law

Exclusionary Practices and the Antitrust Laws

Much public and private enforcement of the antitrust laws is based on a concern with exclusiou, or in antitrust jargon foreclosure, of competing firms from the market. Such seemingly disparate practices as tying arrangements, predatory pricing, vertical mergers, exclusive dealing, and group boycotts are all challenged as tending to exclude competitors on grounds unrelated to the superior efficiency of the firm or firms doing the excluding. The economists of the Chicago School of antitrust analysis, Aaron Director and others,' have mounted a powerful attack on the implicit economic theory that underlies the current policy of the law towards the allegedly exclusionary practices. One purpose of this article is to restate these criticisms and in a few places extend them. The article will also indicate some respects in which I consider the criticisms overstated. Another purpose is to indicate the precise implications for antitrust policy of an appropriately qualified critique of the economic premises of current policy. These implications concern both the substantive content of the law and the allocation of responsibilities for law enforcement.