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ntieth century —
through the work of Henry Simon, Aaron Director, Henry Manne,
George Stigler, Armen Alchian, Gordon Tullock, and others — that the
links between law and economics became an object of serious academic
pursuit. The regulation of business and economic law fell within the
natural interest of the first American scholars of law and economics.
Early research concentrated on areas related to corporate law, tax law,
and competition law. In so doing, the first generation of law and
economics scholars paralleled the efforts of other economists, trying to
explain the functioning of explicit economic markets and the impact of
alternative legal constraints, such as taxes and regulation, on the market.
In the 1960s the pioneering work of Ronald Coase and Guido
Calabresi brought to light the pervasive bearing of economics in all areas
of the law. The methodological breakthrough occasioned by Coase and
Calabresi allowed immediate extensions to the areas of tort, property and
contract. The analytical power of their work was not confined to these
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fields, however, and subsequent law and economics contributions
demonstrate the explanatory and analytical reach of its methodology in a
number of other areas of the law.
A difference in approach is detectable between the law and
economics contributions of the early 1960s and those that followed in the
1970s. While the earlier studies appraise the effects of legal rules on the
normal functioning of the economic system (i.e., they consider the
impact of legal rules on the market equilibrium), the subsequent
generation of studies utilizes economic analysis to achieve a better
understanding of the legal system. Indeed, in the 1970s a number of
important applications of economics to law gradually exposed the
economic structure of basically every aspect of a legal system: from its
origin and evolution, to its substantive, procedural, and constitutional
rules.
Despite some resistance to the application of economics to
nonmarket behavior, the important bonds between legal and economic
analysis, as well as the social significance of the object of study, were in
themselves a guarantee of success and fruitfulness for law and
economics.
An important ingredient in the success of law and economics
research has come from the establishment of specialized journals. The
first such journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, appeared in 1958
at the University of Chicago. Its first editor, Aaron Director, should be
credited for this important initiative, successfully continued by Ronald
Coase. Other journals emerged in the following years: in 1972, the
Journal of Legal Studies, also housed at the University of Chicago, was
founded under the editorship of Richard Posner; in 1979, Research in
Law and Economics, under the editorship of Richard Zerbe, Jr.; in 1981,
the International Review of Law and Economics was established in the
United Kingdom under the editorship of Charles Rowley and Anthony
Ogus (later joined by Robert Cooter and Daniel Rubinfeld); in 1982, the
Supreme Court Economic Review, under the editorship of Peter Aranson
(later joined by Harold Demsetz and Ernest Gellhorn); in 1985, the
Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, under the editorship of
Jerry Mashaw and Oliver Williamson (later joined by Roberta Romano);
and most recently, in 1994, t