This paper looks at Texas tort law reform to make claims regarding the relationship between Texas tort reform and damages recovered. Starting with reform in 1977, Texas has passed 15 pieces of legislation that, in principle, restrict the damages plaintiffs recover. Most empirical analyses have focused primarily on analyzing behavior resulting from the tort reform. In other cases, research has l...

The issue of the influence of norms on behavior is as old as sociology itself. This paper explores the effect of normative homophily (i.e. “sharing the same normative choices”) on the evolution of the advice network among lay judges in a courthouse. Blau’s (1955, 1964) social exchange theory suggests that members select advisors based on the status of the advisor. Additional research shows that...

Unlike bioethicists who contend that there is a morality common to all, H. Tristan Engelhardt (1996) argues that, in a pluralistic secular society, any morality that does exist is loosely connected, lacks substantive moral content, is based on the principle of permission and, thus, is a morality between moral strangers. This, says Engelhardt, stands in contrast to a substance-full morality that...

Relativism and realism are often held to be in conflict. It is not obvious what the exact nature of the conflict is supposed to be, because it is not obvious what the two doctrines amount to. But that there is some kind of conflict between moral realism and moral relativism is evidenced by the fact that some take moral relativism to be the straightforward denial of moral realism. David Brink, f...

Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored moral typecasting-an inverse relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil ...

This essay argues that the success of South Korea’s COVID-19 responses—called “K-Quarantine”—is symptomatic country’s liberal politics in crisis. The therapeutic K-Quarantine is enacted by an amalgam moral guilt and legal liabilities for damages to community, framing COVID-stricken public as potential criminals against community. In this political context characterized guilt, feel culpable if t...

The issue of the influence of norms on behavior is as old as sociology itself. This paper explores the effect of a normative homophily (i.e. “sharing the same normative choices”) on the evolution of the advice network among lay judges in a courthouse. Blau’s (1955, 1964) social exchange theory suggests that members select advisors based on the status of the advisor. Additional research shows th...