Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper will discuss the interconnections between dominant scientific strands in Western thought and claims to objectivity in what I refer to as "legal-economic theory". The current dominant strand of legal economic theory is what is commonly referred to as law and economics (but more appropriately labled "law and neoclassical economics"). The law and neoclassical economics movement, as an extension of the neoclassical economics movement, gained its claim to objectivity based on the philosophical premises of logical positivism and the analytic philosophy movement generally. Those philosophical movements in turn were directly affected by Einstein's theories of relativity. In understanding the claim of objectivity in the law and neoclassical economics movement and why that claim can no longer be sustained (in part due to new conceptions of science and developments in philosophy) it is crucial that legal-academics have a fuller understanding of developments in science and how they shape our general cultural ethos. This paper will be an attempt at a brief sketch. The paper is derivative of a larger project I am in the process of completing that engages the same type of analysis covering the historical trajectory of legal-economic theory in American intellectual thought. The book, under the same title as the paper, will be published by Duke University Press.