Jason Webb Yackee
Biographic Data
| ID | 1493063 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason Webb Yackee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason Webb |
| FAMILY NAME | Yackee |
| SIGNATURE | YACKEE J W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0398-2244 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 393 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Legal Entrepreneurship and the Invention of Legal Meaning: Revisiting Lord Asquith’s Abu Dhabi Award
Lord Asquith’s 1951 award in the Abu Dhabi arbitration is widely recalled as one of the first reasoned international decisions to apply the “General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations” to a dispute between a state and a private investor. The award is also widely reviled. Asquith is said to be a racist, and the award an embarrassment, and no other application of general principles has done more to delegitimize the concept. This Arti…
Procedural constraints and regulatory ossification in the US states
Scholars of the US regulatory process routinely assert that rulemaking is “ossified”—that it has become so encumbered with procedural constraints that it is difficult for agencies to issue socially desirable regulations. Yet, this claim has rarely been subject to empirical testing, and this is particularly true at the sub‐federal (i.e., US state) level. But the same factors that allegedly cause ossification in federal agencies also exist in the s…
The First French BIT
This article draws upon original research in the French government archives to uncover the story of the negotiations of France’s first bilateral investment treaty – a 1963 treaty with Tunisia. France’s model for the treaty was not Germany’s now-famous 1959 investment treaty with Pakistan but, rather, Switzerland’s own (and far more obscure) first investment treaty, also with Tunisia. The article also shows that the treaty’s invocation of ‘fair an…
Expelling the “Sinister Vilgrain”
This article tells the story of the Congo-Brazzaville's nationalization in 1970 of the Société Industrielle et Agricole du Niari (SIAN) and its affiliate Société Sucrière du Niari. At the time of independence, the company, controlled by France's Vilgrain family, was the Congo's largest private employer. The SIAN episode is fertile ground for exploring the theme of postcolonial entanglements from a political-economic perspective. It especially ill…
The American State Administrators Project: A New 50‐State , 50‐Year Data Resource for Scholars
We present the American State Administrators Project (ASAP), a decades‐long survey of state agency leaders. This remarkable dataset provides a 50‐state chronological portrait of state administrative leaders, what they think, and what their agencies do. The dataset has traditionally been closely held but is now being shared with the broader scholarly community for the first time. We use this article to demonstrate the dataset's potential to advanc…
Investor-State Dispute Settlement at the Dawn of International Investment Law: France, Mauritania, and the Nationalization of the Miferma Iron Ore Operations
The case for the desirability of the modern system of investment treaty arbitration rests on certain stylized historical claims. Those claims serve to demonstrate that the pre-modern system of dealing with investor – state disputes was inferior compared to current arrangements, which allow foreign investors to initiate highly legalized (or “depoliticized”) arbitration against host state governments for alleged violations of investment treaties. T…
The First Investor-State Arbitration: The Suez Canal Company v Egypt (1864)
This article provides an in-depth examination of the earliest investor-state arbitration appearing in the historical record—the 1864 arbitration between the Suez Canal Company and Egypt. The arbitration is fascinating because the Company’s claim of mistreatment has a strikingly modern character: under what circumstances, and with what consequences, can the government of the day change its laws in order to promote its conception of the public good…
Administrative Procedures and Bureaucratic Performance: "Is Federal Rule-making "Ossified
We provide the first empirical assessment of the ossification thesis, the widely accepted notion that procedural constraints on federal agencies have greatly hindered the ability of those agencies to formulate policy through notice and comment rule-making. Using data that cover all active federal rule-writing agencies from 1983 to 2006, our results largely disconfirm the ossification thesis. Agencies appear readily able to issue a sizeable number…
Divided government and US federal rulemaking
Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the f…
Bilateral Investment Treaties, Credible Commitment, and the Rule of (International) Law: Do BITs Promote Foreign Direct Investment
A long line of research, beginning with Macaulay's (1963) well-known study of "Non-Contractual Relations in Business," suggests that the formal trappings of domestic law often have effects on private behavior that are, at best, "indirect, subtle, and ambiguous" (Macaulay 1984:155). Law and society scholars have spent somewhat less time exploring whether international law's effects on behavior are similarly attenuated. In this article I examine wh…
A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy
We test the proposition that the federal bureaucracy exhibits a “bias toward business” during notice and comment rulemaking. We analyze over 30 bureaucratic rules and almost 1,700 comments over the period of 1994 to 2001. We find that business commenters, but not nonbusiness commenters, hold important influence over the content of final rules. We also demonstrate that as the proportion of business commenters increases, so too does the influence o…
American Interests and IMF Lending
A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy
We test the proposition that the federal bureaucracy exhibits a “bias toward business” during notice and comment rulemaking. We analyze over 30 bureaucratic rules and almost 1,700 comments over the period of 1994 to 2001. We find that business commenters, but not nonbusiness commenters, hold important influence over the content of final rules. We also demonstrate that as the proportion of business commenters increases, so too does the influence o…
Administrative Procedures and Bureaucratic Performance: "Is Federal Rule-making "Ossified
We provide the first empirical assessment of the ossification thesis, the widely accepted notion that procedural constraints on federal agencies have greatly hindered the ability of those agencies to formulate policy through notice and comment rule-making. Using data that cover all active federal rule-writing agencies from 1983 to 2006, our results largely disconfirm the ossification thesis. Agencies appear readily able to issue a sizeable number…
American Interests and IMF Lending
Bilateral Investment Treaties, Credible Commitment, and the Rule of (International) Law: Do BITs Promote Foreign Direct Investment
A long line of research, beginning with Macaulay's (1963) well-known study of "Non-Contractual Relations in Business," suggests that the formal trappings of domestic law often have effects on private behavior that are, at best, "indirect, subtle, and ambiguous" (Macaulay 1984:155). Law and society scholars have spent somewhat less time exploring whether international law's effects on behavior are similarly attenuated. In this article I examine wh…
Divided government and US federal rulemaking
Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the f…
The American State Administrators Project: A New 50‐State , 50‐Year Data Resource for Scholars
We present the American State Administrators Project (ASAP), a decades‐long survey of state agency leaders. This remarkable dataset provides a 50‐state chronological portrait of state administrative leaders, what they think, and what their agencies do. The dataset has traditionally been closely held but is now being shared with the broader scholarly community for the first time. We use this article to demonstrate the dataset's potential to advanc…
Procedural constraints and regulatory ossification in the US states
Scholars of the US regulatory process routinely assert that rulemaking is “ossified”—that it has become so encumbered with procedural constraints that it is difficult for agencies to issue socially desirable regulations. Yet, this claim has rarely been subject to empirical testing, and this is particularly true at the sub‐federal (i.e., US state) level. But the same factors that allegedly cause ossification in federal agencies also exist in the s…
Investor-State Dispute Settlement at the Dawn of International Investment Law: France, Mauritania, and the Nationalization of the Miferma Iron Ore Operations
The case for the desirability of the modern system of investment treaty arbitration rests on certain stylized historical claims. Those claims serve to demonstrate that the pre-modern system of dealing with investor – state disputes was inferior compared to current arrangements, which allow foreign investors to initiate highly legalized (or “depoliticized”) arbitration against host state governments for alleged violations of investment treaties. T…
American Interests and IMF Lending
A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy
We test the proposition that the federal bureaucracy exhibits a “bias toward business” during notice and comment rulemaking. We analyze over 30 bureaucratic rules and almost 1,700 comments over the period of 1994 to 2001. We find that business commenters, but not nonbusiness commenters, hold important influence over the content of final rules. We also demonstrate that as the proportion of business commenters increases, so too does the influence o…
Bilateral Investment Treaties, Credible Commitment, and the Rule of (International) Law: Do BITs Promote Foreign Direct Investment
A long line of research, beginning with Macaulay's (1963) well-known study of "Non-Contractual Relations in Business," suggests that the formal trappings of domestic law often have effects on private behavior that are, at best, "indirect, subtle, and ambiguous" (Macaulay 1984:155). Law and society scholars have spent somewhat less time exploring whether international law's effects on behavior are similarly attenuated. In this article I examine wh…
Divided government and US federal rulemaking
Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the f…
Administrative Procedures and Bureaucratic Performance: "Is Federal Rule-making "Ossified
We provide the first empirical assessment of the ossification thesis, the widely accepted notion that procedural constraints on federal agencies have greatly hindered the ability of those agencies to formulate policy through notice and comment rule-making. Using data that cover all active federal rule-writing agencies from 1983 to 2006, our results largely disconfirm the ossification thesis. Agencies appear readily able to issue a sizeable number…
The First Investor-State Arbitration: The Suez Canal Company v Egypt (1864)
This article provides an in-depth examination of the earliest investor-state arbitration appearing in the historical record—the 1864 arbitration between the Suez Canal Company and Egypt. The arbitration is fascinating because the Company’s claim of mistreatment has a strikingly modern character: under what circumstances, and with what consequences, can the government of the day change its laws in order to promote its conception of the public good…
Investor-State Dispute Settlement at the Dawn of International Investment Law: France, Mauritania, and the Nationalization of the Miferma Iron Ore Operations
The case for the desirability of the modern system of investment treaty arbitration rests on certain stylized historical claims. Those claims serve to demonstrate that the pre-modern system of dealing with investor – state disputes was inferior compared to current arrangements, which allow foreign investors to initiate highly legalized (or “depoliticized”) arbitration against host state governments for alleged violations of investment treaties. T…
The American State Administrators Project: A New 50‐State , 50‐Year Data Resource for Scholars
We present the American State Administrators Project (ASAP), a decades‐long survey of state agency leaders. This remarkable dataset provides a 50‐state chronological portrait of state administrative leaders, what they think, and what their agencies do. The dataset has traditionally been closely held but is now being shared with the broader scholarly community for the first time. We use this article to demonstrate the dataset's potential to advanc…
Expelling the “Sinister Vilgrain”
This article tells the story of the Congo-Brazzaville's nationalization in 1970 of the Société Industrielle et Agricole du Niari (SIAN) and its affiliate Société Sucrière du Niari. At the time of independence, the company, controlled by France's Vilgrain family, was the Congo's largest private employer. The SIAN episode is fertile ground for exploring the theme of postcolonial entanglements from a political-economic perspective. It especially ill…
The First French BIT
This article draws upon original research in the French government archives to uncover the story of the negotiations of France’s first bilateral investment treaty – a 1963 treaty with Tunisia. France’s model for the treaty was not Germany’s now-famous 1959 investment treaty with Pakistan but, rather, Switzerland’s own (and far more obscure) first investment treaty, also with Tunisia. The article also shows that the treaty’s invocation of ‘fair an…
Procedural constraints and regulatory ossification in the US states
Scholars of the US regulatory process routinely assert that rulemaking is “ossified”—that it has become so encumbered with procedural constraints that it is difficult for agencies to issue socially desirable regulations. Yet, this claim has rarely been subject to empirical testing, and this is particularly true at the sub‐federal (i.e., US state) level. But the same factors that allegedly cause ossification in federal agencies also exist in the s…
Legal Entrepreneurship and the Invention of Legal Meaning: Revisiting Lord Asquith’s Abu Dhabi Award
Lord Asquith’s 1951 award in the Abu Dhabi arbitration is widely recalled as one of the first reasoned international decisions to apply the “General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations” to a dispute between a state and a private investor. The award is also widely reviled. Asquith is said to be a racist, and the award an embarrassment, and no other application of general principles has done more to delegitimize the concept. This Arti…
Political science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Arbitration (5 works) · Law and economics (5 works) · Public Administration (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Agency (philosophy (4 works)