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INTRODUCTION Throughout this century in the United States, four approaches to law have vied for dominance among legal scholars. While there have been many more than four "schools" of law [...]

The author discusses philosophical, social, and political aspects of Italian law and compares some of those aspects to law in the United States.

There is something odd about taking part in a discussion of one's own work. My mother-in-law was an artist and she hated to go to exhibitions of her paintings. She [...]

I. Introduction In September 1993 the Judicial Conference of the United States unanimously adopted the following resolution. The Judicial Conference recognizes as the Benchmark Starting Date for clerkship interviews March [...]

The ideas of Vilfredo Pareto and Ronald Coase have been highly influential in the field of law and economics. Guido Calabresi begins this Article by integrating the insights of these two thinkers so as to shed new light on them. The Coase theorem is generally taken to mean that, in the absence of transaction costs, any starting point will be, or will immediately lead to, an efficient end point. This Article argues that defining efficiency according to a strict Pareto criterion means that any starting point will be or immediately lead to an efficient end point--even given transaction costs. Similarly, the Article argues that consideration of Coase's ideas should change how we think about the Pareto criterion. A distinction is generally drawn between moves which take us to the Pareto frontier--thought of as value-neutral, efficient changes--and actions which shift the frontier itself. Applying Coase's essential insight that transaction costs are costs like any other, however, leads to the breakdown of this distinction. The author argues that all moves from the status quo are either to someone's disadvantage, or represent a shift of the frontier, or both. The Pareto criterion, therefore, can no longer serve as a value-neutral normative guide. Once we have recognized this, the author concludes, we will be better able to develop a meaningful taxonomy of possible moves, and to consider which of these to pursue. The final section of the Article offers thoughts as to what such a new taxonomy might look like.

Gene Rostow was probably the greatest dean in the history of the Yale Law School. When he became dean, the school was a depleted and divided place. In the first [...]

Charles Black came to the Yale Law School faculty in 1956 as part of the most extraordinary group of scholars to burst on one school in the history of American [...]

About forty-five years ago, in my second year as a student at the Yale Law School, an extraordinary group of new faculty members arrived. They included Alexander Bickel, Charles Black, [...]

Judge A. Leon Higgenbotham, Jr., is retiring from his position as Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Higginbotham served 29 years as a federal judge, first on the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and then on the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, becoming Chief Judge in 1990 before ending his judicial career in 1993. Higginbotham's noteworthy publications include the book 'In the Matter of Color' and 'An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague.' He is noted for his intelligence, eloquence and commitment to equality.