Speakers/Abstracts
Sarah F. Brosnan (Emory University, Department of
Anthropology, Postdoctoral Fellow)
Is
a system of justice unique to humans? The evolution of
reactions to inequity in nonhuman species:
Whether justice interpretations are completely the result of
cultural forces or also the result of some evolved response has
deep implications for the law. If the latter is the case, then
it is particularly important that laws capture the essence of
this evolved sense of fairness or they risk not being considered
legitimate by those governed. Species other than humans show
strong responses to inequitable treatment, perhaps indicating
deeper evolutionary roots to justice. Nonhuman primates, our
closest evolutionary ancestors, respond negatively to
inequitable treatment, and these responses are quite variable
dependent upon the social context in which the interaction takes
place. Studying these basic inequity reactions in nonhuman
primates may be particularly informative as it allows study of
“justice” devoid of the complex cultural milieu that surrounds
humans.
Erica Beecher-Monas
(Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock,
William H. Bowen School of Law)
Rethinking
Corporate Accountability: Insights from Evolutionary Biology:
How can we mitigate the agency problems created
by the separation of ownership and control to achieve managerial
accountability? One of the persistent questions in corporate law
has been how to mitigate the agency problems created by the
separation of ownership and control to achieve managerial
accountability. Directors, particularly independent directors,
are supposed to aid accountability by monitoring management, and
following the latest series of corporate scandals, Congress
enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which attempts to improve
corporate governance by making the audit committee the ultimate
firm monitor. This paper discusses the effectiveness of the
audit committee solution to corporate misconduct in light of
evolutionary biology and the insights of behavioral decision
theorists into group decision making. It suggests that a better
understanding of human behavior would lead to more promising
legal solutions, and examines three alternative approaches.
Akiba J. Covitz
(Department of Political Science & Special Assistant to the
President, University of Richmond)
The Nature
of the Constitution: What, if anything, are the
evolutionary implications of the design of the Constitution of
the United States? The Constitution of the United States, in its
fundamental design and operation, and in its most basic
assumptions about politics, polities, and human nature, is very
much a part of the history of political and legal thought,
stretching back to Plato, Athens, and beyond. The Constitution
is not simply a system of government designed to preserve,
protect, and defend the wealth, interests, and property of those
who wrote it. The American founding text also seeks to serve as
a reflection of what its people imagine themselves to be and,
perhaps, also, in biological fact, is.
Gregory Todd Jones (Director
of Research for the Interuniversity Consortium on Negotiation and
Conflict Resolution and Faculty Research Fellow and Adjunct
Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College of Law)
The Importance
of Trust: Adding Reputation and Choice to the Stochastic Spatial
Prisoner's Dilemma:
How might computer-based evolutionary simulations help to illuminate
the roles of trust, reputation, and choice in human interaction as
well as the appropriate role of legal institutions that govern this
interaction? Revisiting and extending the
formative work of Axelrod, Skyrms, and others on the evolution of
cooperation and the development of social institutions such as the
law, this talk proposes to provide a primer on the power that the
computer on your desktop offers to the investigation of these
questions. The talk will seek to develop an intuition for the use of
evolutionary game theory generally and the construction of
computer-based simulations more specifically. These tools will then
be applied to examine how the role of trust is affected by
reputation and choice in the stochastic determination of genetic
fitness.
Bailey Kuklin
(Professor, Brooklyn Law School)
Peril
Invites Rescue: An
Evolutionary Perspective: Do the concepts of kin selection, reciprocal
altruism and sexual selection predict the behavior of rescuers
who make claims under the tort doctrine of "peril invites
rescue"? Under the tort doctrine of "peril invites rescue",
rescuers have a direct cause of action for injuries against
parties who negligently put a person at risk, whether or not the
rescue attempt is successful. The concepts of kin selection,
reciprocal altruism and sexual selection predict that rescue
attempts are more likely to occur by particular parties for
particular rescuees in particular circumstances. After
discussing these predictions, I will report whether they are
confirmed by the actual rescue cases.
Steven E. Rhoads
(Professor of Politics, University of Virginia)
Evolutionary/Biological Reasons why university professor fathers
should not be eligible for Post-birth paid parental leave:
How might evolutionary/biological analysis contribute to an
assessment of the justice of post-birth, gender-neutral paid
parental leaves in academia? The present research examines the
impact of parental leave policies, gender-role attitudes and
"liking" baby care on the distribution of childcare
responsibilities in the families of 184 tenure-track assistant
professors at U.S. institutions. Utilization of paid parental
leave policies by men is associated with higher levels of
participation in parenting tasks, as is a belief in
non-traditional gender roles; however, even those male
professors who take leave and believe in non-traditional gender
roles do much less childcare than female professors. Female
professors get more pleasure from performing child care tasks
than do male professors, and this difference helps explain the
disconnect between egalitarian gender role beliefs on the one
hand and dramatically unequal child care performance on the
other.
Julie A. Seaman
(Assistant Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
(currently an Assistant Visiting Professor of Law)
The
Potential Relevance of Evolutionary Analysis to Workplace Sexual
Harassment Law: How might evolutionary explanations of
behaviors often seen in workplace sexual harassment cases aid in
resolving some doctrinal and evidentiary problems in Title VII
law? In the past, some scholars have employed evolutionary
analysis of sex differences to criticize Title VII sex
discrimination law. In the context of sexual harassment sex
discrimination, however, an evolutionary analysis of common
patterns of behavior reveals that such behavior is ultimately
"because of . . . sex" as required under § 703 of Title VII.
Based upon this analysis, under current Supreme Court doctrine
employers should be held accountable for creating or allowing
workplace environments in which such behaviors are likely to
occur.
Katrina Lee Sifferd
(Visiting Professor and Rockefeller Fellow in Law and Public Policy,
Dartmouth College)
The
Psychological Concepts Underpinning the Criminal Law:
How might evolutionarily-based cognitive science help us to
‘clean-up’ the psychological concepts underpinning criminal law
verdicts? Abstract: The criminal law assumes a commonsense
theory of psychology. Criminal verdicts thus depend upon
attribution of mental states to the defendant, and use of
commonsense psychological concepts such as ‘knowingly’ or
‘purposely’. This paper proposes that evolutionarily-based
functional analysis may be used to improve upon such concepts by
furthering our understanding of the psychological processes they
refer to.
Earl
Thompson (Professor of Economics, UCLA)
The
Evolution of Inefficient Law: Why is modern law
so enormously inefficient and how did it get that way? What is
usually termed "customary law" as it evolved in societies
lacking an organized legal profession systematically satisfies a
large set of necessary conditions for socially efficient law.
These conditions are routinely violated by existing legal
systems, which have been evolved by states that are captured by
their legal professionals. Yet, the paper shows, these
inefficient legal systems have systematically aided the
evolutionary success, the competitive survival, of these modern
states.
