Justice without romance. The history of the economic analyses of judges behavior -1960-1993

Alain Marciano, Alessandro Melcarne () and Giovanni Ramello ()

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Richard Posner's "What Do Judges and Justices Maximize?" (1993a) is not, as usually believed, the first analysis of judges' behaviors made by using the assumption that judges are rational and maximize a utility function. It arrived at the end of a rather long process. This paper recounts the history of this process, from the "birth" of law and economics in the 1960s to 1993. We show that economic analyses of judge behavior were introduced in the early 1970s under the pen of Posner. At that time, rationality was not modeled in terms of utility maximization. Utility maximization came later. We also show that rationality and incentives were introduced to explain the efficiency of Common Law. Around this theme, a controversy took place that led Posner, and other economists, to postpone their analysis of judicial behavior until the 1990s. By then, the situation had changed. New and conclusive evidence of judges' utility maximizing behavior demanded for a general theory to be expressed. In addition, the context was favorable to Chicago economists. It was time for Posner to publish his article.

Keywords: Self-interest; Utility Maximization; Judges; Judicial decision making; Rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-law and nep-upt
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02306821
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020, 42 (2), pp.261-282. ⟨10.1017/S105383721900052X⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02306821/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: JUSTICE WITHOUT ROMANCE: THE HISTORY OF THE ECONOMIC ANALYSES OF JUDGES’ BEHAVIOR, 1960–1993 (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02306821

DOI: 10.1017/S105383721900052X

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().