Whether you are an advanced law student looking to review the basics, or an aspiring law student looking for head start, this course will help you build the foundation you will need to succeed in law school and beyond. This course will introduce you to terminology, concepts, and tools lawyers and legal academics use to make their arguments. It will help you follow these arguments—and make arguments of your own. This course consists of a series of short lectures and assignments. A reading list complements each lesson, providing you with a roadmap to help you explore the subject matter more deeply on your own. Although the lessons may cross-reference each other, they are modular in nature: you should feel free to approach them in whatever order fits your schedule, interests, and needs.
2.3 - Lecture
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From the course by Yale University
A Law Student's Toolkit
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From the lesson
Categories and Distinctions
Dichotomies and oppositions that will help you categorize legal rules and frame policy questions.
Meet the Instructors
Ian AyresWilliam K. Townsend Professor
Yale Law School
[MUSIC]
This amazingly simple tool is a powerful way to generate
the possibility of new legal rules.
The tool asks you to keep an eye out for two by two distinctions,
which can visually be displayed in a four quadrant box.
Let's start with a simple example that is taken from an article by
Steven Crowley and John Hanson.
These authors we're thinking about how accident law treats
non-pecuniary losses, which include losses from pain and suffering.
They realized that accident law could consider the existence of pain and
suffering, either to determine whether the defendant was negligent.
Or to determine the amount of damages for
defendants who have been found negligent, or for both determinations.
So the decision of whether to consider evidence of pain and
suffering is really two independent decisions.
This gave rise to the following two by two box.
Crowley and Hanson saw that by using a two by two box
that there were four different legal approaches which might be used.
Can you see why approach two might be superior to approach four?
Whenever you learn that the law over time, or in different jurisdictions,
has taken three different approaches to regulation,
you should ask yourself whether it's possible to display these three approaches
in a two by two matrix and thereby uncover a hidden fourth approach.
This method of uncovering a hidden fourth rule is just what professor, then dean,
now judge Guido Calabresi and his co-author Doug Melamed did
in one of the most cited law review articles of all time, property rules,
liability rules, and inalienability, one view of the cathedral.
It's my favorite law review article.
The authors explored a classic nuisance dispute between Tawny,
a potential polluter, and Marshall, Tawny's neighbor.
Here's a quote,
traditionally the nuisance pollution problem is viewed in terms of three rules.
First, Tawny may not pollute unless his neighbor,
his only neighbor let's assume, Marshall allows it.
That rule basically says Marshall may enjoin Tani's nuisance.
Second, Taney may pollute but must compensate Marshall for damages caused.
That rule says nuisance is found, but the remedy is limited to damages.
Third, Tawney may pollute at will and
can only be stopped by Marshall if Marshall pays him off.
That rule says that Tawny's pollution is not held to be a nuisance to Marshall.
In our terminology rules one and two, nuisance with injunction
and with damages only are entitlements to Marshall.
The first is an entitlement to be freed from pollution and
it's protected by a property rule.
The second is also an entitlement to be free from pollution but
is protected only by a liability rule.
These first two rules are depicted in this two by two box in this top row.
Where Marshall is the resident who gets the initial entitlement under either
rule one or rule two.
And that the difference between these first two rules is that
rule one is where Marshall is protected by a property rule by an injunction.
And rule two is where Marshall's initial entitlement
is protected merrily by damages.
And now go back to quoting the great article.
Rule three, which is the No Nuisance rule,
is instead an entitlement to Tawny protected by a property role,
for only by buying Tawny out at Tawny's price can Marshall end the pollution.
And this Rule three is depicted down here,
where the initial entitlement to pollute is given to the polluter, Tawny.
And it's protected by a property rule
that Marshall can go to jail if he tries
to interfere with that pollution.
Back to Calabresi and Melamed this is the key moment where they
use this two by two box as a tool to see a new rule, and this is what they said.
The very statement of these rules in the context of our framework
suggests that something is missing.
Missing is a fourth rule representing an entitlement in Tawny
to pollute but an entitlement which is protected only by a liability rule.
The fourth rule, really a kind of partial eminent domain,
coupled with a benefits tax, can be stated as follows.
Marshall may stop Tawny from polluting, but if he does, he must compensate Tawny.
Unquote, the authors use the two by two box as a tool for
discovering additional legal possibilities.
Indeed, in a well known vignette outlined by David Kennedy and
William Fisher, Calabresi and
Melamed's analysis seemed to call the missing fourth rule into existence.
Kennedy and Fisher, and I'm quoting them,
the credibility of the essay was much enhanced by a nearly simultaneous
ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court in an unusual nuisance dispute.
At issue in Spur Industries versus Del Webb Development Corporation was
a demand by the developer of a rapidly expanding retirement community.
That a pre-existing cattle feed lot be shut down because it generated odors and
flies that annoyed the community residents.
Trying to balance several competing considerations,
the seriousness of the harm, the fact that the developer,
by building houses in close proximity to the feedlot, had come to the nuisance.
And the innocence of the community residents,
the court granted an injunction against the continued operation of the feedlot.
But required the developer to indemnify the feedlot operator, quote, for
a reasonable amount of the cost of moving or shutting down, unquote.
Such a composite ruling, it should be apparent,
is an example of Calebresi and Melamed's rule four.
The court seems to have been unaware of their as yet unpublished article.
But its ruling provides strong support for
the author's contention that a purchase injunction might make it possible
to reconcile seemingly incompatible distributional and efficiency goals.
So, for discussion,
do you think you can apply this tool to generate a new legal rule?
See if you can handle this pop quiz.
The common law of contract has three traditional ways to calculate
monetary damages.
Number one is expectation damages have the objective quote to put the injured party
in as good position as he would have been in if the contract had been performed.
Number two, reliance damages have the objective to put the injured party back
in the position he would have been in if the contract had not been made.
And three, restitution damages have the objective to put the party in breach
back in the position, he would have been in if the contract had not been made.
What would the two by two box tool suggest as a fourth rule?
[MUSIC]
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