It Does Exactly what it Says on its Cover: Commons’s Legal Foundations as an Inspirational Text for Legal Institutionalism

Geoffrey Hodgson ()

Journal of Economic Issues, 2024, vol. 58, issue 4, 1096-1106

Abstract: As it says on its cover, John R. Commons’s book on The Legal Foundations of Capitalism examines the legal groundings of capitalist systems. This essay notes that this is distinctive in the history of economic thought, contrasting with the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and other leading theorists. Among the characteristic features of Commons’s approach is his emphasis on the legal rules governing credit and finance. Accordingly, Commons should be regarded as one of the pioneers of what has recently been described as legal institutionalism. This approach regards law as basic and constitutive, rather than a surface or superstructural phenomenon, in modern economies under the rule of law

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00213624.2024.2418260 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:mes:jeciss:v:58:y:2024:i:4:p:1096-1106

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MJEI20

DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2024.2418260

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Issues from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().