Personalized Law

Presented by Omri Ben-Shahar, Professor of Law, the Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law, Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics

Omri Ben-Shahar spoke about his recent co-authored book, Personalized Law. The book presents a vision of a brave new world, where each person is bound by their own personally tailored law. “Reasonable person” standards would be replaced by a multitude of personalized commands, each individual with their own “reasonable you” rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, the most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger protections, age restrictions for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according to the recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization, and discrimination? The lecture asks how personalized law can be designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime would have to prudently avoid.

This event was recorded on June 8, 2022.

2022 Emeritus Luncheon

Professors Grunwald and Rappaport talk about their recent article, The Wandering Officer. “Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. This Article shares the findings of the authors' systematic investigation of wandering officers over thirty years in Florida, possibly the largest quantitative police-misconduct study of any kind. They find that in any given year, an average of just under 3 percent of all officers in Florida were "wandering officers." These wandering officers seemed to face difficulty finding work, and were more likely to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a “moral character violation.” The authors consider why departments nonetheless hire wandering officers and suggest potential policy responses.

2022 Emeritus Luncheon

UChicagoLaw

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