Queues in Law

• Author: Ronen Perry & Tal Z. Zarsky
• Position: Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa/Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa
• Pages: 1595-1658

1595

Queues in Law

Ronen Perry & Tal Z. Zarsky

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1596

I. FAIRNESS .............................................................................................. 1602

A. OVERVIEW ...................................................................................... 1602

B. POSITIVE FAIRNESS ......................................................................... 1603

C. NORMATIVE FAIRNESS..................................................................... 1608

1. Equality: The Negative Aspect ............................................. 1608

2. Equality: The Positive Aspect ............................................... 1611

3. Desert .................................................................................... 1614

II. EFFICIENCY ........................................................................................... 1620

A. OVERVIEW ...................................................................................... 1620

B. FIFO’S ALTERNATIVES .................................................................... 1621

C. IMPACT ON RECIPIENTS .................................................................. 1623

1. Ex Post Effects ........................................................................ 1624

2. Ex Ante Effects ....................................................................... 1626

D. TRANSACTION AND ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS .................................... 1630

E. INCENTIVIZING THE ALLOCATOR TO EXPAND THE RESOURCE ............ 1637

F. BROADER SOCIAL BENEFITS ............................................................. 1641

III. EVASION ............................................................................................... 1644

A. OVERVIEW ...................................................................................... 1644

B. WEALTH-BLIND EXCEPTIONS .......................................................... 1644

1. Consent ................................................................................. 1644

2. Special Need ......................................................................... 1646

3. Merit ...................................................................................... 1649

4. Special Skill ........................................................................... 1651

 Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa.

 Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa.

The authors are grateful to Gregory Alexander, Alfred Brophy, E manuela Carbonara, Lee

Fennell, Andrew Gold, Eric Goldman, Gregory Keating, Michael Krauss, Dan Markel, Robert

Rabin, Lawrence Solum, Lior Strahilevitz, Avishalom Tor, Eyal Zamir, and participants in the

Notre Dame Law School LAMB Conference, EMLE Conference at t he University of Hamburg,

and the University of Haifa faculty of law workshop, for valuable comments on earlier drafts,

and to Alon Agmon and Talya Ponchek for research assistance. We are also indebted to the

editors of the Iowa Law Review for their remarkable work on this Article.

1596 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 99:1595

C. WEALTH-RELATED CIRCUMVENTION STRATEGIES ............................ 1652

1. Fairness and Values .............................................................. 1652

2. Efficiency ............................................................................... 1654

CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 1657

INTRODUCTION

The Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860, which was intended to facilitate

communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states, provided that

received messages “shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their

reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have

priority.”1 In doing so, the Act introduced a “first come, first served”

(“FCFS”) rule, also known in queuing theory as the “first in, first out”

principle (“FIFO”), with a limited exception. FIFO is an allocation method

in which resources are apportioned/distributed to interested parties in their

order of entry.2 The compensation fund, established by BP in partial

fulfillment of its obligations under the Oil Pollution Act following the

Deepwater Horizon oil spill,3 provides a contemporary manifestation of the

same FCFS/FIFO principle, with a different exception. Kenneth Feinberg,

the fund’s administrator, stated, “claims are processed in a single queue that

operates on the principle of ‘first in, first out’ and that claimants

confronting financial need are the only ones who can skip to the front of the

line.”4 Likewise, the Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) provides that

conflicting security interests in the same collateral rank according to priority

in time of filing or perfection, namely on a FIFO basis, but recognizes a

consent-based exception.5 Finally, in Pierson v. Post,6 one of the foundational

readings in every property law class,7 the court applied a variation of the

1. Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860, ch. 137, § 3, 12 Stat. 41, 42.

2. See, e.g., Neil MacCormick, Norms, Institutions, and Institutional Facts, 17 LAW & PHIL.

301, 305 (1998) (explaining the meaning of FIFO).

3. See Ronen Perry, The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the Limits of Civil Liability, 86

WASH. L. REV. 1, 3–4, 54 (2011) (discussing the Deepwater Horizon incident and its legal

implications).

4. Sasha Chavkin, Gulf Spill Victims’ ‘Escalated’ Claims Still Languishing, PROPUBLICA (Oct.

25, 2010, 9:38 AM), http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/gulf-spill-victims-escalated-claims-

still-languishing.

5. U.C.C. §§ 9-322(a)(1), 9-339 (2011); see also 4 JAMES J. WHITE & ROBERT S. SUMMERS,

UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE § 33-3 (6th ed. 2010) (“First in time, first in right—that general

rule runs like a golden thread through virtually all priority schemes . . . .”).

6. Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. 175 (N.Y. 1805).

7. See Alfred L. Brophy, Introduction: A Famous Fox, a Surfacing Whale, and the Forgotten

Slave, 27 LAW & HIST. REV. 145, 146 (2009) (“[E]ach year tens of thousands of first year law

students read Pierson v. Post . . . .”).

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FIFO principle—the rule that property in wild animals is acquired by first

occupancy—to decide between competing claims to property.

As noted, FIFO allocates resources to interested parties in their order of

entry.8 Although the introductory illustrations imply that FIFO is an

omnipresent and overarching principle in the law, the legal literature has

never recognized or analyzed it as such.9 This Article aims to fill this

surprising theoretical gap. The Article makes three contributions to the

literature. First, it constructs an innovative and comprehensive theoretical

framework to assess FIFO’s role in resource allocation, integrating several

dimensions of fairness and efficiency. Second, this Article highlights the

prevalence of FIFO in law by analyzing and critically evaluating its role in a

wide array of legal contexts. Third, this Article substantiates a

jurisprudentially provocative thesis: While FIFO can be similarly applied in

numerous contexts, it has no consistent set of justifications for all

applications. Its rationalization in law must be highly varied and context-

specific. We shall now elaborate on each contribution.

The first and main purpose of this Article is to provide a theoretical

framework for evaluating FIFO-based rules and practices, their exceptions,

and their real-life operations. FIFO plays a significant role in allocating

resources in everyday life.10 Thus, it has been studied in many disciplines,

including economics, psychology, sociology, political science, engineering,

computer science, telecommunications, and operations research.11 It has

occupied the minds of some of the most prominent scholars of our era, such

as mathematician J.F.C. Kingman,12 operations researcher Richard Larson,13

social psychologist Stanley Milgram,14 political philosopher Michael

Sandel,15 and economist Donald Wittman,16 to name but a few. However,

non-legal studies have usually addressed very specific applications of FIFO

from distinct methodological perspectives, without attempting to provide a

8. See, e.g., MacCormick, supra note 2, at 305 (explaining the meaning of FIFO).

9. There is seemingly one exception. Dean Lueck briefly enum erates FIFO’s

manifestations in various legal contexts. Dean Lueck, The Rule of First Possession and the Design of

the Law, 38 J.L. & ECON. 393, 394 (1995). However, his model focuses on first-possession—a

very limited application of FIFO—and analyzes it only from an economic perspective.

10. See DONALD GROSS ET AL., FUNDAMENTALS OF QUEUEING THEORY 4 (4th ed. 2008)

(observing FIFO’s prevalence in everyday life); Donald Witt man, Efficient Rules in Highway Safety

and Sports Activity, 72 AM. ECON. REV. 78, 78 (1982) (same).

11. See GROSS ET AL., supra note 10, at 2–3 (reviewing applications of queuing theory).

12. J.F.C. Kingman, The Effect of Queue Discipline on Waiting Time Variance, 58

MATHEMATICAL PROC. CAMBRIDGE PHIL. SOC’Y 163 (1962).

13. Richard C. Larson, Perspectives on Queues: Social Justice and the Psychology of Queueing, 35

OPERATIONS RES. 895 (1987).

14. Stanley Milgram et al., Response to Intrusion in to Waiting Lines, 51 J. PERSONALITY & SOC.

PSYCHOL. 683 (1986).

15. MICHAEL J. SANDEL, WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY: THE MO RAL LIMITS OF MARKETS 17–41

(2012) (discussing the ability to jump queues).

16. Wittman, supra note 10.