Synopses & Reviews
Conundrums, puzzles, and perversities: these are Leo Katzandrsquo;s stock-in-trade, and in Why the Law Is So Perverse, he focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation. First, legal decisions are essentially made in an either/or fashionandmdash;guilty or not guilty, liable or not liable, either itandrsquo;s a contract or itandrsquo;s notandmdash;but reality is rarely as clear-cut. Why arenandrsquo;t there any in-between verdicts? Second, the law is full of loopholes. No one seems to like them, but somehow they cannot be made to disappear. Why? Third, legal systems are loath to punish certain kinds of highly immoral conduct while prosecuting other far less pernicious behaviors. What makes a villainy a felony? Finally, why does the law often prohibit what are sometimes called win-win transactions, such as organ sales or surrogacy contracts?
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Katz asserts that these perversions arise out of a cluster of logical difficulties related to multicriterial decision making. The discovery of these difficulties dates back to Condorcetandrsquo;s eighteenth-century exploration of voting rules, which marked the beginning of what we know today as social choice theory. Condorcetandrsquo;s voting cycles, Arrowandrsquo;s Theorem, Senandrsquo;s Libertarian Paradoxandmdash;every seeming perversity of the law turns out to be the counterpart of one of the many voting paradoxes that lie at the heart of social choice. Katzandrsquo;s lucid explanations and apt examples show why they resist any easy resolutions.
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The New York Times Book Review called Katzandrsquo;s first book andldquo;a fascinating romp through the philosophical side of the law.andrdquo; Why the Law Is So Perverse is sure to provide its readers a similar experience.
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About the Author
Leo Katz is the Frank Carano Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the author of Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law and Ill-Gotten Gains: Evasion, Blackmail, Fraud, and Kindred Puzzles of the Law, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Why Does the Law Spurn Win-Win Transactions?
1. Things We Canand#8217;t Consent to, Though No One Knows Why
2. A Parable
3. Lessons
4. The Social Choice Connection
Part II. Why Is the Law So Full of Loopholes?
5. The Irresistible Wrong Answer
6. What Is Wrong with the Irresistible Answer?
7. The Voting Analogy
8. Turning the Analogy into an Identity
9. Intentional Fouls
Part III. Why Is the Law So Either/Or?
10. The Proverbial Rigidity of the Law
11. Line Drawing as a Matter of Life and Death
Part IV. Why Donand#8217;t We Punish All We Condemn?
12. The Undercriminalization Problem
13. Multicriterial Ranking and the Undercriminalization Problem
Final Thoughts
Notes
Index