Legal Complexity: Some Causes, Consequences, and Cures

Schuck, Peter H.

doi:10.2307/1372753

Cited by 92 publications

(62 citation statements)

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“…The complexity of the law is a topic long considered by scholars. (Long and Swingen 1987;Schuck 1992;White 1992;Flournoy 1994;Feltovich et al 1995;Kaplow 1995;Tullock 1995;Epstein 1995Epstein , 2004Kades 1997;Wright 2000;Bourcier and Mazzega 2007a;Ruhl 2008;Phelan 2009;Frisch 2011). Although it is a question with important positive and normative dimensions, the study of legal complexity has arguably taken a narrow approach to the question.…”

Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although it is a question with important positive and normative dimensions, the study of legal complexity has arguably taken a narrow approach to the question. As noted by Professor Schuck '' [F]or all the broad-gauged interest in legal complexity, legal scholars have largely confined their analyses of this phenomenon to two aspects: (1) its transaction costs, including legal uncertainty; and (2) certain of its sources, especially litigation incentives, judicial decisions, and rule form'' (Schuck 1992). In response to the state of the scholarship, ''…one is struck by [its] narrowness.…”

Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Legal complexity, after all, has consequences that go well beyond transaction costs, and has sources besides litigation incentives and judicial lawmaking. Its forms, costs, structural causes, limits, and possible reform raise important social issues that need to be explored in greater depth and breadth'' (Schuck 1992). These themes are later echoed in a subsequent survey of legal complexity, ''[L]egal scholars have not had an easy time defining complexity, and some have been disarmingly honest about this difficulty.…”

Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Measuring the complexity of the law: the United States Code

Katz

Bommarito

2014

Artif Intell Law

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Einstein's razor, a corollary of Ockham's razor, is often paraphrased as follows: make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. This rule of thumb describes the challenge that designers of a legal system face-to craft simple laws that produce desired ends, but not to pursue simplicity so far as to undermine those ends. Complexity, simplicity's inverse, taxes cognition and increases the likelihood of suboptimal decisions. In addition, unnecessary legal complexity can drive a misallocation of human capital toward comprehending and complying with legal rules and away from other productive ends. While many scholars have offered descriptive accounts or theoretical models of legal complexity, most empirical research to date has been limited to simple measures of size, such as the number of pages in a bill. No extant research rigorously applies a meaningful model to real data. As a consequence, we have no reliable means to determine whether a new bill, regulation, order, or precedent substantially effects legal complexity. In this paper, we begin to address this need by developing a proposed empirical framework for measuring relative legal complexity. This framework is based on ''knowledge acquisition'', an approach at the intersection of psychology and computer science, which can take into account the structure, language, and interdependence of law. We then demonstrate the descriptive value of this framework by applying it to the U.S. Code's Titles, scoring and ranking them by their relative complexity. We measure various features of a title including its structural size, the net flow of its intra-title citations and its linguistic entropy. Our framework is flexible, intuitive, and transparent, and we offer this approach as a first step in developing a practical methodology for assessing legal complexity.

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Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The United States Codementioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring the complexity of the law: the United States Code

Katz

Bommarito

2014

Artif Intell Law

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“…It is the city-its citizens-who must be creative, not the public regulatory framework (Moroni 2011). Simplicity requires plain and unambiguous rules; that is, rules that steer clear of technicality, complexity, and indeterminacy (Schuck 1992;Epstein 1995). Responses to them can only be binary, with no room for ad hoc administrative interpretation and discretionality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban density after Jane Jacobs: the crucial role of diversity and emergence

Moroni

2016

City Territ Archit

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Background: In the early part of the twentieth century, planning theory and practice always voiced strong opposition to density. The error of this insistence was persuasively argued by Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. Subsequently, planning theory and practice came to recognise the importance of density, but this return to favour requires remaining constantly alert to the possible dangers and pitfalls. Methods:Critically considering the traditional and contemporary urban planning literature and the empirical evidence in the recent economic and geographical research, this article investigates the whys and wherefores of density in urban planning. It addresses two main questions: Is urban density really desirable (and why)? Is it effectively manageable (and how)?Results: Density per se is meaningless unless it is a tool or condition for achieving something further. And even if the instrumental function of density were to be acknowledged, it is crucial to take into account that density is not solely (or merely) a tool which-in certain conditions-can be useful in reducing commute times and minimising the encroachment on undeveloped land. Its primary advantage concerns favouring the concentrated diverse admix of human preferences, tastes, abilities, know-how, uses, activities, and so forth. Conclusions:After having expressly laboured to avoid it for so long, the aim is not to create density directly, but to open the door and allow density to happen in our cities, thanks to more abstract and general planning rules.

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“…The concept of ''legal complexity'' was masterfully defined in general by Schuck (1992) and was applied by Di Vita (2010) to the Italian legal system, exclusively from a quantitative point of view.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Normative complexity and the length of administrative disputes: evidence from Italian regions

Vita

2010

Eur J Law Econ

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The aim of this paper is to study the effects of normative complexity on delays in justice. In particular, a unique database was used, created by reading eight hundred sentences pronounced by the Italian Regional Administrative Courts of first instance (Tribunali Amministrativi Regionali), located in each of the 20 regions in Italy, between 2000 and 2007. After a preliminary analysis of the data, regarding the duration of disputes, their objects and other relevant variables, an econometric study was performed to verify whether the length of administrative disputes may be explained, together with other causes, by the complexity of the legal system. The indicator used as a proxy of normative complexity was developed in previous studies in this field. Different kinds of models were used and specifications performed to render the empirical results more robust. The outcome of the analysis appears to support the idea that normative complexity may be a burden on the activity of courts, and that this could contribute to explaining the slowness of justice proceedings.

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Legal Complexity: Some Causes, Consequences, and Cures

Cited by 92 publications

References 0 publications

Measuring the complexity of the law: the United States Code

Measuring the complexity of the law: the United States Code

Urban density after Jane Jacobs: the crucial role of diversity and emergence

Normative complexity and the length of administrative disputes: evidence from Italian regions

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