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Yeager, Leland B. --- "Walter Eucken (1891–1950)" [2005] ELECD 161; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 37

Section Title: Walter Eucken (1891–1950)

Author(s): Yeager, Leland B.

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

37 Walter Eucken (1891­1950)
Leland B. Yeager


Was Walter Eucken a pioneer in law and economics? Perhaps not, not if the
field is conceived narrowly as `the use of economics to explain common ­
that is, judge-made ­ law' and `to understand and explain the emergence of
legal doctrines in areas of law that do not seem, on the surface, to be suscep-
tible to economic reasoning' (Boudreaux 1994, p. 264). On a broader
conception, however, according to which the field overlaps the work of public-
choice scholars (Boudreaux 1994, p. 264), Eucken and his Freiburg colleagues
are indeed notable contributors.1
With reference to the yearbook Ordo that Eucken and Franz Böhm launched
in 1948 as the `discussion platform' of the Freiburg school, its adherents are
often called Ordoliberals (Grossekettler 1989, p. 42).2 `Order', a central con-
cept in their thinking, means something like `system', `basic structure',
`institutional framework', or `organizing principles'.
Ordoliberals emphasize that just as various economic magnitudes are inter-
dependent, so are economics and politics and all other areas of life.
Policymakers must take this interdependence among subsystems of society
into account when shaping and adapting the corresponding institutions. Eucken
and Böhm conceived of an economic constitution corresponding to the polit-
ical constitution; both require checks and balances to prevent arbitrary use of
power (Jöhr 1950, pp. 274­5; Streit 1994, p. 512). Eucken called for `Unity
of Constitutive Principles'. Political decisions on the economic constitution
must apply, for example, not only ...