Law and Economics in the Future of Legal Scholarship, Education, and Practice

Law and economics has become the dominant style of legal scholarship in the United States. This Article considers and illustrates the ways in which law and economics has affected and will affect legal scholarship, education, and practice. After first defining law and economics as a method by which to predict and measure law’s impact on behavior, the Article makes the claim that the central, lasting impact of law and economics on the field of law is through its importation of the scientific method into legal inquiry. The Article illustrates this claim through theoretical and empirical examples.