MAURITS BARENDRECHT, Tilburg University - Law School
Email: j.m.barendrecht@uvt.nl

This paper reviews the literature on policies aiming to improve the rule of law and the operation of a legal system. It takes a bottom up perspective of clients seeking access to justice and uses transaction costs on the market for justice as a criterion to evaluate justice policies. Most justice is created through ‘justice transactions,’ including informal help from friends, legal advice, information about law, ADR services, other forms of informal justice, and adjudication. Such transactions are seriously hampered by three major transaction cost problems, however. Justice policies include codification, setting up courts and reforming them, financing of courts, legal aid, stimulating ADR, developing rules of procedure, and regulation of the legal profession. The transaction cost perspective explains why many traditional justice policies do a poor job to increase access to justice or to diminish the costs of civil justice.

More promising justice policies enable justice to emerge bottom up, in the interactions between clients and providers of justice services. These policies focus on the information needs of disputants, low cost default procedures, choice for plaintiffs, accountability towards clients, gradual, needs-based formalization of legal relationships, and strengthening informal compliance mechanisms. Such policies are relevant for any justice system, but in particular for legal empowerment of the poor and for stimulating microjustice.

STEVE MATZURA, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: smatzura@hotmail.com

Energy production will likely remain dependent on coal in the future, especially in the United States and Pennsylvania where the resource is abundant. But renewable energy efforts may diminish the reliance on coal, especially with an increased focus on climate change and cries to “phase-out� fossil fuels. This paper details Pennsylvania's incentive-based alternative energy legislation and grant programs that are geared to economic considerations and catering to the coal industry, yet have sparked a local response that is creating renewable energy opportunities in the most unlikely of places: the Anthracite Coal Region. Financial incentives from Pennsylvania's legislation have been welcomed with open arms in the Anthracite Region, where the coal industry and renewable energy have developed a unique relationship. Overall, Pennsylvania’s focus on coal and the co-benefits of land remediation and job creation may renew the economically depressed and environmentally ravaged Anthracite Region. Pennsylvania’s state and local renewable energy efforts can serve as a model to improve the economy and combat climate change, but legislation in the future must also focus on reducing the impact of our continued reliance on coal.

BERNADETTE ATUAHENE, Illinois Institute of Technology - Chicago-Kent College of Law
Email: batuahene@kentlaw.edu

The conception of property that a transitional state adopts is critically important because it affects the state’s ability to transform society. The classic conception of property gives property rights a certain sanctity that allows owners to have near absolute control of their property. But, the sanctity given to property rights has made land reform difficult and can serve as a sanctuary for enduring inequality. This is particularly true in countries where ownership is contested and land reform is essential due to pervasive past property theft. Oddly, the classical conception is flourishing in transitional states, like South Africa and Namibia, where transformation of the property status quo is essential. The specific question this Article addresses is: for states where past property dispossession threatens to destabilize the current state, is the classical conception appropriate or do these states require an alternative conception of real property? In this Article, I develop the transformative conception of real property to explore how the exigent need for societal transformation should inspire us to rethink property rights.

CHRISTOPHER LEWIS PETERSON, University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law
Email: petersonc@law.utah.edu

Following the Great Depression, the federal government was the primary architect of the secondary residential mortgage market. The foremost pillars of this federal involvement were the twin government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the public debate over the struggling American financial system, opponents of federal involvement in housing finance have persisted in asserting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the home foreclosure crisis. This symposium essay attempts to provide a brief rebuttal to this surprisingly persistent oversimplification. It begins with historical context necessary for understanding the debate over the GSEs’ responsibility. Next it explains the development of the private, sub-prime home mortgage market, recounts the radical change in the GSEs’ investment and underwriting policies in the mid-2000s, and traces the events leading to the collapse and nationalization of the two companies. Although the GSEs began to engage in unacceptably risky investment decisions, the two companies were only one part of a larger more complex commercial and regulatory pattern that also included monetary policy, regulatory dereliction, judicial passivity, ill-advised borrowing, and reckless (or dishonest) brokering, appraising, lending, servicing, and securitizing by private financial services companies.

DAVID SCHORR, Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law
Email: dschorr@tau.ac.il

What is the connection between the property regime under which the law allocates water, and the degree of protection afforded by the law to public, “instream uses� of water? More concretely, to what extent is it true that a system of water law based on private property tends to impede protection of water-related natural values, while public ownership facilitates such conservation?

This paper addresses these questions through a comparative study of water law in Israel, where water is the property of the state, and the western United States, where water law is based on private property rights. The law of the western United States is shown to have certain advantages over its Israeli counterpart, due to the judicial development of doctrines which recognize “private� rights owned by the public. The ultimate conclusion is that the public/private property distinction is of little significance if protection of instream uses is the goal; either type of property can be used for public-regarding purposes or turned to advancing private interest exclusively.

IGOR V. NOVIKOV, Suffolk University Law School
Email: igor.novikov@yahoo.com

Solar energy is cheap, abundant, and readily available. Solar energy could help the United States to decrease (and, potentially, eliminate) its dependency on oil imports. However, the rate of solar technology adoption has been slow, to say the least. This paper is an attempt to summarize different ways in which state and local governments, courts, and private citizens address challenges arising from solar power adoption.