Legal proceeding

Abstract: Richard A. Posner - judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuitin, Professor of the University of Chicago Law School. Address: 1111 East 60th Str., Room 611, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. E-mail: [email protected] modernizing nation's economic prosperity requires at least a modest legal infrastructure centered on the protection of property and contract rights. The essential legal reform required to create that infrastructure may be the adoption of a system of relatively precise legal rules, as distinct from more open-ended standards or a heavy investment in upgrading the nation's judiciary. A virtuous cycle can arise in which initially modest expenditures on law reform increase the rate of economic growth, in turn generating resources that will enable more ambitious legal reforms to be undertaken in the future. Legal reform is an important part of the modernization process of poor countries, but the focus of such reform should be on creating substantive and procedurally efficient rules of contract and property rather than on creating a first-class judiciary or an extensive system of civil liberties. This is a general prescription, however, and the proper legal structure for an individual country will depend on a host of considerations. The fundamental tradeoff is between making a rather modest investment in better rules and making a big investment in the judiciary. The more costly it is to create a high-quality independent judiciary, the more beneficial it is to focus legal reform on the adoption of substantively and procedurally efficient rules. Indeed, if the law's administrative infrastructure is sufficiently weak, even good rules may simply be ignored. Economic progress is possible with little - perhaps with no - law and can be stifled by ex­cessive investment in public-sector projects, including legal reform. A small expenditure on law reform can increase the rate of economic growth, which will in turn generate additional resources for more ambitious legal reforms later.

Abstract: With the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton now well behind us, we can step back and consider the matter somewhat more dispassionately. The focus of the impeachment hearings was that Clinton perjured himself and engaged in obstruction of justice. I limit my observations to the question of whether he committed perjury, and in particular whether he lied when he denied having a sexual relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. When Clinton was first asked during a deposition whether he had ever had an affair or sexual relationship with Lewinsky, he quite explicitly denied it. He was asked about his denials during a second legal proceeding - his testimony before a grand jury - when he was again placed under oath. Clinton insisted that his denials were true based on the ordinary understanding of these terms. In other words, he appealed to usage of that phrase in the speech community. His lawyers during the impeachment made similar arguments on the basis of dictionary definitions. Because there seems to be a great deal of variation in how people use this phrase, I will argue that Clinton's defenders were largely correct on this point. The lawyers examining the president were obviously aware of the dangers of using such a slippery term, so they introduced a definition of sexual relations into evidence during the deposition and then asked Clinton whether, under that rather convoluted definition, he had engaged in sexual relations with Lewinsky. Clinton again denied having done so, but was later forced to admit to at least some sexual activity with the former intern. During the subsequent grand jury proceedings he was also interrogated on his denials of having sexual relations, as defined. His defense consisted of an extremely literalistic dissection of the words of the definition. I will suggest that a large part of the problem is that the definition had largely been textualized. A result of textualization is that the resulting text invites a very literal and sometimes even hypertechnical interpretation, and Clinton was only to happy to comply.

Abstract: This article reports the findings from an original survey examining the relationship between two important functions of the legal system -- establishing truth and providing justice -- and the public's perceptions of the legitimacy of legal decision makers. The results suggest that establishing the truth of the matter in a legal proceeding is a distinct psychological goal from attaining justice from the legal decision maker. Instead, these concepts have parallel influences on the public's perceptions of the decision maker's legitimacy. Implications for the legal system are discussed.

Abstract: Drawing on the new institutional economics, the authors examine the impact on businesses of Brazil's relatively complex, nontransparent legal and regulatory institutions and compare their costs with those of Chile's institutions, which are relatively simple. They examine four basic areas where legal and regulatory institutions could create critical obstacles to efficiency in the garment industries of Sao Paulo and Santiago: (a) the start-up of a new business (entry); (b) the regulation of business; (c) orders by customers of garment firms; and (d) sales with credit. They find that Chilean business transactions benefit from legal simplicity and more consistent enforcement than in Brazil, but that these perceived advantages are offset because of the differences between formal law and practice in Brazil. In two of these areas, Brazil has evolved some effective institutional substitutes to reduce the costs that would otherwise have been imposed by inefficient formal institutions. In the entry of new businesses, professions have evolved to transform the process of registering a new business from a potentially tortuous obstacle path into a fairly affordable one-stop process. In debt collection, information systems limit the need to resort to the formal legal system. Nevertheless, regulation raises the cost of transactions for Brazilian businesses. Costs are further raised by greater uncertainty and frequent renegotiation of orders.