Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process

Bruno Deffains () and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Additional contact information
Bruno Deffains: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject to uncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In contrast, the law is certain ex post: litigation fosters the creation of precedents that reduce uncertainty. We postulate that there is a natural balance between the degree of uncertainty of a legal system (kept under control by litigation) and its litigation rate (sustained by uncertainty). We describe such equilibrium rates in a model of tort litigation, study how they are affected by different policies, and compare the costs and benefits of the legislative and the judicial process of lawmaking.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 2005, 163 (4), pp.627-656. ⟨10.1628/093245607783242990⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00279241

DOI: 10.1628/093245607783242990

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().