Imperfect Alternatives

Major approaches to law and public policy, ranging from law and economics to the fundamental rights approach to constitutional law, are based on the belief that the identification of the correct social goals or values is the key to describing or prescribing law and public policy outcomes. In this book, Neil Komesar argues that this emphasis on goal choice ignores an essential element—institutional choice. Indeed, as important as determining our social goals is deciding which institution is best equipped to implement them—the market, the political process, or the adjucative process. Pointing out that all three institutions are massive, complex, and imperfect, Komesar develops a strategy for comparative institutional analysis that assesses variations in institutional ability. He then powerfully demonstrates the value of this analytical framework by using it to examine important contemporary issues ranging from tort reform to constitution-making.

Provides a formal theory of nonmarket failure, analyzing such problems as redundant costs, monopoly, frequency of unanticipated externalities, and bureaucracy in such nonmarket institutions as foundations, universities, and government. A theory of market failures is well established in economics, but the same has not been true for the study of nonmarket failures. Markets or Governments remedies this situation by providing a formal theory of nonmarket failure, analyzing such problems as redundant costs, monopoly, frequency of unanticipated externalities, and bureaucracy in such nonmarket institutions as foundations, universities, and government. This new edition updates the data and results contained in the first edition and includes references and applications of the theory to the ongoing process of system transformation in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe. The discussion of earlier literature that is relevant to the theory of nonmarket failure has been expanded.

Provides a formal theory of nonmarket failure, analyzing such problems as redundant costs, monopoly, frequency of unanticipated externalities, and bureaucracy in such nonmarket institutions as foundations, universities, and government.

Educational equality has long been a vital concept in US law and policy. Since Brown v. Board of Education, the concept of educational equality has remained markedly durable and animated major school reform efforts, including desegregation, school finance reform, the education of students with disabilities and English language learners, charter schools, voucher policies, the various iterations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (including No Child Left Behind) and the 'Stimulus'. Despite such attention, students' educational opportunities have remained persistently unequal as understandings of the goals underlying schooling, fundamental changes in educational governance, and the definition of an equal education have continually shifted. Drawing from law, education policy, history and political science, this book examines how the concept of equality in education law and policy has transformed from Brown through the Stimulus, the major factors influencing this transformation, and the significant problems that school reforms accordingly continue to face.

It is remarkable that 10 years after the Human Rights Act came into effect, and with further reform possible, there are still no clear answers to basic questions about the relationship between the Human Rights Act, human rights principles and the common law. Such basic questions include: what is the Human Rights Act? What is the relationship between human rights principles and common law doctrines in public law? Do traditional public law principles need to be replaced? How has the Human Rights Act altered the constitutional relationship between the courts, government and Parliament in the UK? Public Law After the Human Rights Act proposes answers to these questions. Unlike other books on the Human Rights Act, the book looks beyond the Human Rights Act itself to its effect on public law as a whole. The book articulates in novel ways the relationship between the Act and administrative and constitutional law. It suggests that the Human Rights Act has built on the common law constitution. The discussion focuses on core topics in modern public law, including, the constitutional status of the Human Rights Act; the relationship between human rights and the common law; the Human Rights Act's effect on central doctrines of public law such as reasonableness, proportionality and process review; the structure of public law in the human rights era; derogation and emergencies; and the right of access to a court. Winner of the Inner Temple Young Author Book Prize 2011.

Since the world economic crisis of 2007, commentators have pointed to the dangers of a capitalistic system that seems incapable of delivering sustainable growth and well-being. This bold new book offers an exhaustive diagnosis of global capitalism across the world’s nations. David Lane examines the nature and appeal of neoliberal capitalism according to different schools of thought, and he analyses proposals for its reform and replacement from state socialism and social democratic corporatism to self-sustaining networks. Looking ahead to a novel system of economic and political coordination based on a combination of market socialism and state planning, this book offers crucial insights for scholars thinking about alternatives to capitalism. Chapters 3 and 16 are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.