Best Unwitten Books IV
Posted March 1, 2009, 09:03 ET
An Intellectual History of Law and Economics would study one of the most important development of the last 50 years, a movement first stigmatized and then welcomed as a crucial tool in legal analysis.
The book would trace the now-familiar roots of law-and-economics from Bentham and Holmes to Coase, Manne and Posner, and then show how the movement spread beyond antitrust and narrow private law regimes of property, contract, corporate and tort law to bankruptcy, family, criminal, conflicts and international law. It would also examine challenges from the social norms and behavioral schools.
This would be a book about ideas. What it would not offer is a boring Industrial Organization toolkit for progressive critics of law and economics. Steve Teles has already written that book.
What also would be of interest is a Ved Mehta look at the movement. Fly and the Fly Bottle was a lot of fun, and something similar awaits the biographer who ventures to the modern legal academy.
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