Today, the Supreme Court issued its much anticipated Wal-Mart v. Dukes ruling. In a few days, I’ll post a more in depth analysis of the decision, particularly as it applies to the Court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ central sociological theory, which alleged that Wal-Mart’s corporate culture promoted employment discrimination. The Court ultimately held that this theory was procedurally insufficient to certify 1.5 million women in a class action.
Take a look at the Court’s opinion here.
Welcome to the informational site for the upcoming FL-GA Legal Studies Research Conference.
This inaugural conference will be hosted by The College of Business at Florida State University in October, 2011. After that, the conference will rotate among the three other founding and participating institutions: The University of Georgia, The University of Florida and The Georgia Institute of Technology.
The event will bring together prolific and renowned legal studies in business scholars. These scholars routinely examine legal issues that confront managers who make decisions at the nexus of business and the law.
Please click on the Invitation to Register and the Conference Agenda to learn more about this exciting event.
The following list of presenters and attendees will be updated periodically, so please make sure to check back to learn more about the program.
Confirmed Presenters:
The Florida State University:
Chad Marzen, presenting: “OCIPs in the Future of the Insurance Industry: Legal and Regulatory Considerations”
Darren Prum, presenting “High Speed Rail in America: An Evaluation of the Regulatory, Real Property, and Environmental Obstacles a Project will Encounter” (with Sarah L. Catz, University of California, Irvine)
University of Florida:
Robert W. Emerson, presenting: “Franchise Terminations: “Good Cause” Decoded”
Larry A. DiMatteo, presenting “An ‘All of the Above’ Theory of Legal Development”
The University of Georgia:
Alex Reed, presenting: “Subsidizing Hate: A Proposal to Reform the Internal Revenue Service’s Methodology Test”
Nathaniel Grow, presenting: “In Defense of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption”
The Georgia Institute of Technology:
Seletha R. Butler, presenting: “All on Board! Strategies for Constructing Diverse Boards of Directors and Creating a Future Pipeline in a Borderless Global Marketplace”
Confirmed Attendants:
Stephen Bailey, The Florida State University
Seletha R. Butler, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Karie Davis-Nozemack, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Lucien J. Dhooge, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Larry A. DiMatteo, University of Florida
Robert W. Emerson, University of Florida
Nathaniel Grow, The University of Georgia
Chad Marzen, The Florida State University
Darren Prum, The Florida State University
Lee Reed, The University of Georgia
Alex Reed, The University of Georgia
David Orozco, The Florida State University
Bill Woodyard, The Florida State University
This post will inaugurate a new feature of this blog. At times, whenever I come across a paper or research talk that poses an interesting legal finding or issue, I’ll profile it as a research spotlight. To kick off this feature, I’ll discuss a paper written by a colleague at Florida State University.
Today I attended a talk at the FSU Law School at which Professor Dino Falaschetti presented his paper: “A Difficulty in the Concept of Affirmative Action: Evidence from Females in Legislatures”. The paper empirically tests Suzanne Scotchmer’s theory, which posits that: “(1) winner-take-all games (e.g., promotions in hierarchies) favor inherently risk-taking males, but (2) successful females maintain greater skill on average and (3) see this skill-advantage depreciate with repeated play.”
The paper makes a contribution since the theory has rarely ever been empirically tested. A clever experiment was designed using elections in legislatures in both majoritarian (winner take all) vs. proportional election systems. The U.S. follows the majoritarian electoral system, where the candidate who garners the majority (> 50%) votes wins. Many, if not most, countries follow a proportional system whereby parties and their candidates obtain representation in proportion to the votes they obtain.
The article’s findings suggest a statistically significant result that demonstrates a negative correlation between elected female legislators and winner take all (majoritiarian) electoral systems across time and 130 countries . Ultimately, the author positions these findings as challenging the outcomes of affirmative action programs, since gender may ultimately lead to unintentional results due to the outcomes generated by risk preferences unique to gender type. I think the paper may also raise some interesting questions related to institutional economics, given that similar outcomes were seen across a broad spectrum of societies and cultures
The link to the article on SSRN is here.
professororozco.com 