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Backhaus, Jürgen G. --- "Connections with law and society research" [1999] ELECD 29; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 22

Section Title: Connections with law and society research

Author(s): Backhaus, Jürgen G.

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

22 Connections with law and society research
Jiirgen G. Backhaus


In this entry we try to point to some connections between law and society
research, on the one hand, and law and economics work, on the other. In
emphasizing general similarities, we are trying to connect different bodies of
literature that stem from different disciplinary backgrounds but which, in
complementing each other, might be fruitfully combined in interdisciplinary
law and economics-law and society projects.
`The study of legal change can be considered to be at the heart of sociology
of law as an enterprise' (Cotterrell, 1995, p. 351). As a matter of fact, the same
holds for a substantial body of literature in law and economics. Although most
law and economics work discusses the end point of legal change as the out-
come of purposeful interaction (of legislatures, courts, plaintiffs and defendants,
and so on), prominent scholars in particular in the field of economic history
have interpreted the course of economic history in terms of a change of struc-
tures (of property rights assignments) in order to capture externalities and
thereby more fully facilitate economic growth. A leading proponent of this
approach is Douglas North (see North, 1981). Specifically, since economics is
a social science (Frey, 1992) devoted to any circumstance in which alternatives
have to be weighed against each other from the point of view of an identifiable
agent with sufficiently clear objectives (Buchanan, 1969), law and economics
research is not confined to the sphere of the purely ...