Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

My writing project this summer is now taking shape as a draft manuscript, and is available for download on SSRN.  I would really appreciate current or former students, colleagues, and friends downloading it and giving me feedback on it, as I plan to spend the Fall revising it and then submit it to journals in February.  The title/link is Codification and Transaction Costs , and here is the tentative abstract: The consensus view in the academic literature has been that rules present lower transaction costs – in the form of information costs – for the courts and citizenry, when compared to standards. Rules are more specific and detailed, so there is less uncertainty and less need for sophisticated interpretation. At the same time, the prevailing wisdom holds, specific rules impose higher enactment costs for legislatures. Systematic codification, which became of universal feature of American statutes in the twentieth century, seems to invert this relationship, lowering transa...