This semester, I am taking an excellent class in "Law and Economics" with Professor Charles Rowley. What does economics have to do with law, you might ask? I think David Friedman gives a great description on the back of his book, Law's Order (emphasis mine):It was the discovery of non-obvious, counter-intuitive insights like this that originally drew me into economics. Law is a particularly neat field to study using the lens of economics because it is full of real-world cases (each with a story all its own) to examine.
Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This cut-to the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting.
Surprisingly, common law parallels very closely what one would expect if it had been designed with economic efficiency (maximization of social welfare) in mind. It is a great example of a complex system of order emerging undesigned from numerous interactions of individuals and institutions evolving over centuries into the system of laws we have today.
This looks to be a very fun and fascinating class. I can’t wait to learn more!
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