Litigation with Inalienable Judgments
研究了当法院判决不可通过事后合同放弃时，私人诉讼方的策略行为，发现不可放弃性会引发寻租行为，如为影响判决结果进行策略性投资和损害公共利益的合谋和解，为评估私人和解提供了新视角。
We study strategic behavior by private litigants when courts’ judgments are inalienable in the sense that it is unlawful to contract around them ex post. Inalienable judgments arise in many contexts, including antitrust, labor law, intellectual property law, unfair competition, and various types of public interest litigation. We show that inalienability systematically creates incentives for problematic rent-seeking behaviors: strategic investments intended to influence the outcome of litigation and collusive ex ante settlements that enrich the parties at the public’s expense. These problems arise because the parties generally have asymmetric stakes, and asymmetric stakes affect strategic behavior differently when judgments are inalienable. Our analysis offers new insights into the normative evaluation of private settlements and establishes a underlying economic connection between problematic settlements spanning a wide range of legal contexts. It also sheds new light on the selection of disputes for litigation.