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Professor Bruce Hay
As a member of the faculty of Harvard Law School since 1992, Professor Bruce Hay has authored numerous works appearing in prominent law review journals and reference materials on the economics of tort law, environmental law, and class actions. In addition to writing on substantive legal rules about party liability, Professor Bruce Hay devotes much of his scholarly attention to civil procedure and litigation.
Writing for sophisticated audiences including litigation practitioners, law professors, and judges, Professor Bruce Hay has authored, individually or in conjunction with other professors, numerous works about procedural and evidentiary matters. For a number of these, Bruce Hay collaborated with Kathryn Spier, the Domenico de Sole Professor of Law at Harvard University. One of their earlier works was the definitive survey of scholarship written about settlement negotiations, included in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law. Professors Bruce Hay and Kathryn Spier offer a concise but critical introduction to the massive body of legal and economic writings on litigation and settlement, addressing key issues such as the reasons parties choose to litigate rather than settle out of court, the factors that determine a settlement’s terms and likelihood, and the ways various procedural rules affect litigation and settlement behavior. One of the rules substantially affecting party behavior in litigation identified by Professors Hay and Spier is the allocation of the burden of proof. In the Journal of Legal Studies, Professor Bruce Hay employs legal models to explain contemporary judicial practices of applying burdens of proof and argues that particular allocations of burdens of proof could maximize efficiency during the discovery process and minimize the transaction costs of litigation. Professor Bruce Hay has written about numerous other issues regarding litigation, including the settlement of class action cases, the impact issue and claim preclusion doctrine has on settlement, and the role of conflicts of law in product liability litigation.
In addition to his work as a commentator on the judicial process, Bruce Hay also provides consulting services regarding ongoing cases, and serves as an expert witness before state and federal courts.
Bruce Hay's Publications
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Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Event, Bruce Hay
April, 2011
By Professor Bruce Hay
A French philosopher born in Morocco, Alain Badiou serves as a professor at European Graduate School and formerly chaired the Philosophy Department at the École Normale Supérieure, one of the prestigious “grandes écoles” of France.
Considered a continental philosopher, Badiou advocates for a return to a more Platonic school of thought that emphasizes basic concepts such as being and truth as a lens for further analysis. Among Badiou’s most interesting and divergent arguments is his theory of events. He claims that events are vital to our conception of the world, but because they cannot be ontologically discerned and given a name, they create a rift between subject and the state of being. To deal with this problem, Badiou looks to Paul J. Cohen’s ideas about conditions of sets, which are defined by dominations, those conditions that don’t have the necessary properties that previously made the set discernable, per se. Within the context of the world, one may envision a set of dominations, a set of generic concepts or, in other words, indiscernible concepts. We may thus think outside of the material world and the subject becomes responsible for identifying and naming the indiscernible object within the constructs of the discernible world.
Badiou demarcates four domains within which we witness and identify an event: love, science, politics, and art. As subjects, we must decide upon the indiscernible, giving it an experimental name. Only through this process may truth emerge. He argues against truth through decision, calling for a revisionist approach to identity. One does not define an event through a single decision. Rather, the event’s veracity becomes apparent as various individuals identify and define it within the constructs of love, science, politics, and art.
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Bruce Hay Explains Legal Terms
September, 2011
As a professor at Harvard Law School, Bruce Hay prefers to research litigation economics, risk and insurance, ethics and decision theory, and complex litigation, class actions, and attorney fees. He teaches various classes at Harvard to law students but understands the average individual may find legal terms confusing. Here are explanations of some common legal terms:
Plaintiff: the plaintiff is the client that files a formal complaint with the court and initiates a lawsuit.
Defendant: the defendant is the client that the lawsuit is filed against.
Due Process: this is the legal guarantee that the defendant will receive a fair and impartial trial.
Public Defender: public defenders are state employees that provide counsel to defendants who are unable to hire an attorney.
Evidence: information presented to the court in support of the defendant’s or plaintiff’s claim.
Testimony: oral evidence presented before the court.
Witness: an individual that gives testimony in front of the court.
Hearsay: evidence given by an individual who did not hear or see firsthand what he or she is claiming. Typically, hearsay evidence is not qualified as evidence.
Jury: a group of impartial citizens selected to hear trial evidence and pass judgment on the matter, finding favor in the plaintiff or the defendant.
Verdict: the ultimate decision of guilt or innocence concluded by the jury or the trial judge.
Sequester: in the dictionary, sequester means to separate. In terms of trial, juries are sometimes sequestered, or separated, from outside influences while they deliberate the verdict.
Bruce Hay is a tenured professor at Harvard Law School.
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