Faculty News

The story, "Millions have been invested in the emerging field of neurolaw. Where is it leading?", highlights the results of projects sponsored by the Research Network and features its director, Owen Jones, who holds the Glenn M. Weaver, M.D., and Mary Ellen Weaver Chair in Law, Brain and Behavior. Read More

New research by Owen Jones, Christopher Jaeger '09 and two colleagues may explain why we sometimes overvalue items we’ve acquired—to an irrational degree—irrespective of their market or sentimental value. The endowment effect can lead people to make unpredictable economic decisions and has far-reaching implications for legal policy relating to markets and business. Jones holds the Glenn M. Weaver, M.D. and Mary Ellen Weaver Chair in Law, Brain, and Behavior, and Jaeger is an acting assistant professor of lawyering at New York University who also holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Vanderbilt. Read More

The scholarship was endowed by a gift from the Sarah and Ross Perot Jr. Foundation to recognize Zeppos’ extraordinary tenure as Vanderbilt chancellor from 2008 through 2019. Ross Perot Jr., BA’81, announced the gift Feb. 7 at a meeting of Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust, on which he has served since 2010. The chancellor emeritus is currently on a yearlong sabbatical and will return to the Vanderbilt faculty as professor of law and political science. Read More

Hall-Hartman Awards are based on a poll of students in each first-year section and also honor outstanding teaching in large and small upper-level classes. Read More

Julie Rose interviews W. Kip Viscusi about balancing the economic toll of sheltering in place with the risk of more coronavirus cases if businesses reopen in this April 8 podcast. Read More

Their column, "Let's Pay the Stimulus in Digital Dollars," touts the advantages of a "digital dollar" in allowing for faster distribution of stimulus funds, supporting social distancing, reducing the cost of distributing funds to recipients, and eliminating check-cashing costs and other fees for recipients who don't have bank accounts. Read More

In a discussion with Planet Money hosts Sarah Gonzalez and Kenny Malone, Professor Viscusi applies his research on the value of reducing risks to life to two pressing questions: "Is it worth it to shut down the economy to save lives?" Or "Should we let people die to save the economy?" He talks about how he came up with a value for a human life and how that value could inform decisions about when to reopen the economy. Viscusi co-directs the Ph.D. in Law and Economics program. Read More

Sitaraman and co-authors Julius Krein and E. Glen Weyl propose the formation of a Pandemic Testing Board tasked with scaling up production, coordination and deployment of COVID-19 tests. The board's mission would be to increase the supply of tests and to launch a Pandemic Response Corps of civilians trained to administer them. Read More

John Hasnas, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics, touts The Conservative Case for Class Actions as "a well-constructed, informative, and clearly expressed argument for the value of class action lawsuits." In his review, published in Regulation, Hasnas says Fitzpatrick's book "should appeal to thoughtful readers regardless of prior ideological commitments." Read More

In a coauthored opinion piece published by The American Prospect, Ganesh Sitaraman and co-author Lev Menand look back at policy choices made during the economic crisis of 2008 to provide insights for navigating the current economic emergency. By examining what worked and what didn’t in response to the 2008 crisis, they suggest, we can reprise successful strategies while avoiding pitfalls. Sitaraman is the author of The Great Democracy, and Menand, an academic fellow and lecturer at Columbia Law School, served as a senior advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 2015-16. Read More