Origins of Law and Economics: The Economists' New Science of Law, 1830-1930 (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics)

In the 1830s, the "new science of law" aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodologically individual terms of economic discourse. Practitioners were inclined to admit altruistic values, bounded rationality, and institutional inertia into their research programs. This positive analysis of law tended to push normative discussions up from the level of specific laws to society's political organization. Late-twentieth-century institutional economics is currently developing greater resemblances to this now-forgotten new science. This work analyzes the centrality of law in nineteenth-century historical and institutional economics and serves as a prehistory to the new institutional economics of the late twentieth century. Starting around 1830 the "new science of law" aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodological individualist terms of economic discourse, stressing determination and evolutionism. The new science employed the concept of an invariant homo oeconomicus, which had the effect of reducing law's diversity to diversity in the economic or transactional environment. A special premium was attached to covering laws that could account for the longitudinal and cross-sectional diversity of social experience. By this definition, the college of the new science included members of the German and English historical schools, notably Wilhelm Roscher, Karl Knies, Gustav Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, and Karl Bucher, early American institutionalists such as John R. Commons, and others such as Emile de Laveleye, Carl Menger, Achillee Loria, and Max Weber. This work analyzes the centrality of law in nineteenth-century historical and institutional economics and is a prehistory to the new institutional economics of the late twentieth century. In the 1830s the 'new science of law' aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodologically individualist terms of economic discourse, stressing determinism and evolutionism. Practitioners stood readier than contemporary institutionalists to admit the possibilities of altruistic values, bounded rationality, and institutional inertia into their research program. Professor Pearson shows that the positive analysis of law tended to push normative discussions up from the level of specific laws to that of society's political organization. The analysis suggests that the professionalization of the social sciences - and the new science's own imprecision - condemned the program to oblivion around 1930. Nonetheless, institutional economics is currently developing greater resemblances to the now-forgotten new science In the 1830s, the 'new science of law' aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodologically individual terms of economic discourse. Practitioners were inclined to admit altruistic values, bounded rationality, and institutional inertia into their research programmes. This positive analysis of law tended to push normative discussions up from the level of specific laws to society's political organisation. Late twentieth century institutional economics is currently developing greater resemblances to this now-forgotten .. The century preceding 1914 saw momentous change in the way scholars thought about society and its institutions. Heath Pearson. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 176-198) And Index.