PERSPECTIVES ON LAW AND ECONOMICS

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students with a general introduction to important ongoing debates regarding the role of legal institutions in the modern economy. Students will be introduced to major competing perspectives on law and economics based in differing notions of the good and just society and economy. We will study the theoretical and empirical impact of legal institutions across a series of specific areas of the U.S. legal system: including property, contract, and tort law; employment law; and employment discrimination and civil rights law. We will analyze real-world judicial decisions as illustrations of the relationship between law and economics in each area of the U.S. legal system. The final section of the course will cover the economics of the legal process and criminal law, as well as labor law, including an examination of recent debates regarding the need and prospect for criminal justice and labor law reform. This course requires no prior economics background and will prove especially interesting to economics, criminal justice, political science, sociology, and history majors.