Who's Junketing the Judges

     The Law and Economics Center (LEC), a non-profit organization loosely affiliated with the George Mason University Law School in Arlington, Virginia is the oldest and largest organization hosting junkets. Indeed, in 1997 the LEC gloated that “[m]ore than one-third of the sitting federal judiciary” had attended an LEC economic institute. CRC research revealed that 258 judges reported attending 616 LEC programs during the 1992-2004 period. Apparently, admittance to the programs is so sought after that there are frequently far more applicants than spaces available. According to the LEC, the Science and Public Health Institute, held in the fall of 1998, had 70 applicants for only 18 or so spots.

     LEC junkets are held at resort locations including: Amelia Island Plantation, Amelia Island, Florida (www.aipfl.com); Sea Pines Plantation, Hilton Head, South Carolina (www.oceanfrontrentals.com/seapines.asp); The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, Florida, (www.ritzcarlton.com); and, the Omni/Tucson Golf Resort and Spa, Tucson, Arizona (www.tucsonnational.com). The LEC pays for the course, deluxe accommodations, transportation, food, drink and some recreational activities. One judge attending a 1997 LEC seminar reported that the value of the seminar was $7367.     Programs at the Law and Economic Center cover a number of topics all with a distinctly free-market, anti-regulatory bent. The foundational Economics Institute, which is a prerequisite to most of the other programs offered, is described as “an intensive course of study in price theory taught from a property rights perspective with an emphasis on the economic effects of alternative legal regulations." LEC's Risk, Injury and Liability Institute is described as demonstrating “the superiority of a legal system that assigns liability to those best able to avoid injury over a system that seeks only to spread risks by assigning liability to the 'deepest pockets.'” Within the programs, judges are instructed in such matters as “Misconceptions about Environmental Pollution and Cancer” and “Real Science vs. Junk Science.”

     By all accounts, the LEC programs are effective and convincing. An LEC newsletter proudly proclaims that many judges report that the program “totally altered their frame of reference for cases involving economic issues.” In an infamous example, U.S. District Judge Spencer Williams attended a LEC seminar while presiding over a predatory pricing case. While he was attending the LEC seminar at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in the amount of $5 million which, under the law, he was bound to triple to $15 million. Instead, he returned from the seminar and overturned the jury's verdict. He later wrote a letter to LEC that read in part: “As a result of my better understanding of the concept of marginal costs, I have recently set aside a $15 million anti-trust verdict.”