The Rule of Lawyers
Two recent books examining the interchange between law and economics make clear that the modern world cannot be understood, let alone governed, without a multidisciplinary perspective. Yet insofar as there is an ongoing dialogue between the two fields, it tends to be a one-way conversation.
BOSTON – Law professors are apparently chafing at the confines of traditional law and economics, an academic subfield that emerged when intermediate-level microeconomics was imported wholesale into law. Proponents of law and economics largely succeeded in displacing previous, ethics-based modes of jurisprudence and establishing economic efficiency as a key criterion for settling legal disputes.