Economics as the Law
22 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2005
Abstract
This Essay represents a version of a chapter in my forth coming book "Trust and Honesty, America's Business Culture at a Crossroad." In designing legal protection from breach of trust and deception lawyers and judges have not only used this branch of economics as an information source but also adopted its objectives in substitution of the law's objectives. The first issue in this Essay relates to the ways in which legal economics simplifies the world. This is the reasons for its attraction and rejection. The second issue in this Essay relates to the autonomy of the law. It raises a concern that the soul and mind of the law are lost in the jargon and approaches of this special form of "imperial economics." It suggests that the place of economics in law is the same as any other discipline. Economic objectives have a modest place in law just as the objectives of other disciplines have not.
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