A few days ago, I had the chance to visit the University of Tel Aviv Law School to
present my latest research (which I’m striving to make SSRN-ready in the next
few weeks) in Talia
Fisher’s Rethinking The Issue Of
Commodification seminar. Typical
of the inter-university generosity I’ve encountered while I’ve been here, the
introduction to Talia was a circuitous one. I met Yuval
Feldman, of Bar-Ilan, at a great conference on the Behavioral
Analysis of Law: Markets, Institutions, and Contracts, organized by Avishalom
Tor of Haifa. Yuval recognized
right away that I would benefit from meeting his colleague at Bar-Ilan, Tsilly Dagan, who also
writes on commodification issues, particularly as it relates to tax (more on
that in a minute). Tsilly then
made the connection to Talia, and a fabulous afternoon (for me, anyway) at Tel
Aviv was born.
For Lounge readers who don’t know, Tsilly Dagan is a Senior
Lecturer (with tenure) at Bar-Ilan, where she teaches various courses on tax
law and tax policy, as well as a course on Law & Social Justice. Much of Dagan’s recent research focuses
on the intersection of tax law and commodification. See, for example, her recent articles on Itemizing
Personhood, Virginia Tax Review (Forthcoming, summer 2009), and Commodification Without Money,
Theoretical Inquiries in Law Forum (Forthcoming 2010).
Talia Fisher is a senior lecturer (with tenure) and the
director of the Taubenschlag Institute of Criminal Law at Tel Aviv, where she
teaches Evidence Law, Evidence Law Theory, ADR, and Negotiation Theory. Talia’s
primary research interests include the private supply of legal institutions and
probabilistic applications in procedural law, though she also writes on
commodification and alienability issues, including a recent paper with Dagan on
Rights for
Sale (previously titled A Market
for Public Entitlements in the SSRN version).
The paper interests me because it expands the horizons of
the alienability discussion beyond its traditional arenas of taboo markets
(such as organs, babies and sexuality) to the terrain of “Public Entitlements,”
Dagan and Fisher’s term for the host of rights that individuals enjoy in
relation to the government, including voting rights, the right to trial, the
right against self-incrimination, the right to public education, the right to
pollute, and various subsidies and tax attributes. Dagan and Fisher argue that
there is nothing inherently inalienable about Public Entitlements (“PEs”) and
that concerns over full-fledged alienability can be addressed through targeted
restrictions on different dimensions of alienability, without resorting to
complete inalienability. Moreover, they contend that analyzing alienability in
the context of PEs highlights the richness of the normative considerations
underlying alienability.
For dinner, we were joined by Menachem
(“Menny”) Mautner, the Daniel Rubinstein Chair Professor of Comparative Civil
Law and Jurisprudence at Tel Aviv, and the school’s former Dean. Menny teaches courses in contract law
and a seminar on Markets and Culture, and has published numerous articles and book
chapters in the areas of contract law, law and culture, and multiculturalism.
It was a great evening, with a lively discussion of many
topics. Naturally much of the
conversation centered on our shared interests in commodification, alienability,
and markets and culture. But we
managed to find time to touch on everything from the weather in Boston, women
in the armed forces, and the Israeli love of cell phones, as well. All in all, a day and an evening that
was more than worth the trip down from Haifa.
Above: View of Tel Aviv
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