O’Hara & Ribstein on the Law Market
Larry Ribstein & Erin O’Hara have posted Chapter 1 of their bookm The Law Market, on SSRN. Here’s the abstract:
In their book, The Law Market, Erin O’Hara and Larry Ribstein show
that states increasingly act as hawkers of legal rules in a market for
law where people and firms often can shop for those regimes that they
find most desirable. This market helps deal with a world in which
increasing mobility strains traditional notions that laws operate
within geographic borders. The law market also helps to discipline
interest group attempts to pass laws that impose costs on society.
Moreover, lawmakers have powerful incentives to enforce parties’
bargains regarding the applicable law in order to attract or retain
mobile firms and residents. On the other hand, the law market threatens
governments’ ability to protect its citizens from harmful private
conduct.The authors argue for an approach to enforcing choice-of-law
contracts that can help maximize the beneficial effects of the law
market while tempering its costs. Competition among lawmakers can be
superior to sweeping federalization or harmonization of laws across
states or nations. At the same time, this approach avoids the costs of
subjecting firms and people to different laws in all of the places they
travel and do business. The authors show how their insights and
recommendations apply across a wide variety of legal problems,
including corporate governance, securities, franchise, trust, property,
marriage, living will, surrogacy, and general contract regulations.
This book therefore provides a useful template for analyzing the role
of law in an increasingly mobile world. It also points the way to
preserving a role for states and other smaller jurisdictions against
the onslaught of federal or global legislation.
Check it out!
Source: Lawrence Solum
