Law and Social Economics : Essays in Ethical Values for Theory, Practice, and Policy

Law and Social Economics explores several areas in which social economics can contribute to the study of law. This edited volume is the first collection of essays exploring the intersection of social economics and the law, providing alternatives to neoclassical law-and-economics and applying them to real-world issues. Law is a social enterprise concerned with values such as justice, dignity, and equality, as well as efficiency - which is the same way that social economists conceive of the economy itself. Social economists and legal scholars alike need to acknowledge the interrelationship between the economy and the law in a broader ethical context than enabled by mainstream law-and-economics. The ten chapters in Law and Social Economics, written by an international assortment of scholars from economics, philosophy, and law, employ a wide variety of approaches and methods to show how a more ethically nuanced approach to economics and the law can illuminate both fields and open up new avenues for studying social-economic behavior, policy, and outcomes in all their ethical and legal complexity Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Toward a Contractarian Theory of Law....Pages 3-20 Environmental Ethics, Economics, and Property Law....Pages 21-40 Individual Rights, Economic Transactions, and Recognition: A Legal Approach to Social Economics....Pages 41-59 Institutionalist Method and Forensic Proof....Pages 61-75 Retributivist Justice and Dignity: Finding a Role for Economics in Criminal Justice....Pages 77-96 Front Matter....Pages 97-97 Female Genital Mutilation and the Law: A Qualitative Case Study....Pages 99-121 An Unexamined Oxymoron: Trust but Verify....Pages 123-137 On the Question of Court Activism and Economic Interests in Nineteenth-Century Married Women’s Property Law....Pages 139-160 Divergent Outcomes of Land Rights Claims of Indigenous Peoples in the United States....Pages 161-181 Punitive (and) Pain-and-Suffering Damages in Brazil....Pages 183-207 Back Matter....Pages 209-217