The Future of Law and Economics?

Part II of a excellent series by Josh Wright:

My sense is that the increase in mathematical rigor poses special problems for L&E for several reasons. The primary reason is that the historical success of law and economics turns at least in part of its unparalleled success at the retail level. First and second generation producers of law and economics scholarship — think Director, Alchian, Coase, Williamson, Posner, Easterbrook, Calabresi, Stigler, Demsetz, and others — were able to “sell” important economic insights to lawyers, judges, policy audiences and the legal academy more broadly. Henry Manne took advantage of the power and accessibility of the economics insights from these L&E scholars by bringing them together at Economics Summer Camps to teach economics to law professors. The newly educated law professors would in turn, retail the power of economic thinking to law students. A similar process would take place with efforts to teach federal judges basic microeconomic theory through the George Mason Law and Economics Center programs which were also a brainchild of Henry Manne (this seems like a good place to plug Larry Ribstein’s essay on Henry Manne: Intellectual Entrepreneur which is forthcoming in a book I am co-editing with my colleague Lloyd Cohen on the Pioneers of Law and Economics).

In any event, the point is that much of the success of L&E owes to its success at the retail level. Antitrust is a wonderful example of the success of L&E. There is perhaps no other area where economic theory is integrated into the law. But even in areas where economics have not completely dominated the intellectual discourse, L&E has been an important voice in academic and policy debates in many areas of the law. Its voice is one that pushes for an understanding of how economic agents will respond to changes in the law, how markets work, and how markets respond to legal change. No matter whether one adopts the L&E worldview, as I do, I don’t think there is much debate the L&E has added a significant and valuable perspective to legal discourse. Indeed, one can make the case that its impact has been mores strongly felt than any other interdisciplinary approach to the law. The recent trend towards detachment from the retail audiences, from this perspective, is a special historical development in L&E. It is also one that is quite troublesome from the perspective of an L&E scholar who would like to see the field retain its influence. L&E scholarship, it seems, is at a crossroads. The concern is not just that L&E scholarship as we know it will move to economics departments. After all, economics departments do not currently value much of the work that is done by L&E scholars. The concern is that L&E scholarship as we know it will disappear altogether.

Read the whole thing and see Part I here. If what Wright is saying is true, I could be in trouble...

P.S. -- More on this here.

(HT Legal Theory Blog)