The First Great Law &amp; Economics Movement

Hovenkamp, Herbert J.

doi:10.2307/1228909

Cited by 61 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…Many of the insights that economic sociology offers to the study of law and the economy are either implicit in or consistent with extant L&S scholarship. They are also consistent with the ideas about the nexus of law and economy found in the classical social theories of Marx and Weber (Marx 1967;Weber 1978) and with what is sometimes called the first law and economics movement, which included the institutional economics of Robert Hale, John R. Commons, Thorstein Veblen, and others (see Hovenkamp 1990).…”

supporting

confidence: 84%

Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality

Edelman¹

2004

Law Soc Rev

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supporting

confidence: 84%

Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality

Edelman¹

2004

Law Soc Rev

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“…It should be noted that efficiency is defined here to be a move toward greater overall prosperity in society (i.e., a move toward Pareto optimality in that no individual's wealth decreases and at least one individual's wealth increases with such a move; see McConnell, 1987, chap. 38, on wealth maximization as one conception of efficiency; see also Dworkin, 1980;Hovenkamp, 1990aHovenkamp, , 1990bPosner, 1977Posner, ,1980. Table 2 shows the predicted fairness rankings of societies ranging from 1 (least fair) to 9 (most fair) for the compromise, maximin, and value-guided perspectives.…”

Section: Comparing the Orientationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Mitchell

Tetlock

Mellers

et al. 1993

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

203

125

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Political economists agree that a trade-offexists between equality and efficiency. Using a hypothetical society paradigm, we manipulated the mean income (representing efficiency) and income variability (representing equality) of distributions of wealth and the correlation between wealth and effort within a society. Subjects made all pairwise comparisons of distributions within societies of differing meritocracy. A "maximin" principle best described trade-off resolution strategies when effort and outcome were weakly linked: People maximized the minimum standard of living within a society. A compromise principle best described preferences when income was tightly linked to effort: People rejected distributions in which some citizens fell below the "poverty line" but maximized efficiency above this constraint. Ideological polarization was pronounced under moderate meritocracy; here liberals could focus on the role of chance and conservatives on the role of effort and ability.

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“…If judges were able only to choose rules achieving partial inefficiency, even if they could do so infallibly, the set of legal rules still would tend over time to contain more efficient rules than judges desired, because rules that imposed greater inefficiency would be more likely to be relitigated. It is evident, furthermore, that the tendency of the common law over time to favor efficient rules does not depend on the ability of judges to distinguish law date back to the late 19th century (see, for instance, Hovenkamp 1990Hovenkamp , p. 1016. efficient from inefficient outcomes.…”

Section: Inefficient Judges and Efficient Judge-made-lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization, path dependence and the law: Can judges promote efficiency?

Marciano¹,

Khalil²

2012

International Review of Law and Economics

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The thesis that judges could (voluntarily or not) promote efficiency through their decisions has largely been discussed since Posner put it forward in the early 1970s. There nonetheless remains a methodological aspect that has never (to our knowledge) been analyzed and that we address in this paper. We thus show that both promoters and critics of the judge-and-efficiency thesis similarly use a definition of optimization in which history, constraints and path-dependency are viewed as obstacles that must be removed to reach the most efficient outcome. This is misleading. Efficiency cannot be defined in absolute terms, as a "global ideal" that would mean being free from any constraint, including historically deposited ones. That judges are obliged to refer to the past does not mean that they are unable to make the most efficient decision because constraints are part of the optimization process; or optimization is necessarily pathdependent. Thus, the output of legal systems cannot be efficient or inefficient per se.

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The First Great Law & Economics Movement

Cited by 61 publications

References 0 publications

Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality

Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality

Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Optimization, path dependence and the law: Can judges promote efficiency?

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