The Non‐existence of Markets in the Economic Analysis of Law à la Mode
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12464 |
| Author | David Campbell |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
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Modern Law Review
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2230.12464
REVIEW ARTICLE
The Non-existence of Markets in the Economic
Analysis of Law `
alaMode
David Campbell∗
Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl,Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism
and Democracy for a Just Society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2018, xxii, 337 pp, £24.00.
Readers of this journal still following law and economics, particularly the
variant associated with Richard Posner, who celebrated his eightieth birthday
this year, will have been surpr ised by the left-wing nature of a number of the
things said over the last decade or so. Influenced, of course, by the financial crash
and by the success of extremely interventionist policies intended to prevent it
from turning into, so far as this conveys any meaning, a complete breakdown
of the financial system, Posner himself became an enthusiastic advocate of both
Keynesian general demand management and Pigouvian piecemeal regulatory
intervention;1a far cry from the position of one who first came to prominence
by advocating deregulation in the most strident way.2
Such readers will nevertheless find their capacity for surprise being tested
again by the book under review, one of whose authors is Richard Posner’s son,
Eric Posner, who has achieved what must have been difficult by establishing
an independent reputation as a leading contributor in a number of areas,
including but by no means confined to the theory of law and economics.
Posner’s co-author is an unorthodox but mathematically adept economist, now
the Principal Researcher in the economics section of the research arm of
Microsoft, whose still quite brief career has already drawn considerable attention
in a number of areas, largely those covered in the book under review.
Richard Posner’s new position on the left is as nothing compared to that
of Eric Posner and his co-author. Though the book under review’s title is
∗Lancaster University Law School. Much of the workon this review was done whilst I was a Visiting
Professor in the Auckland University of Technology Law School, New Zealand and I am grateful to
AUT for its hospitality.
1 R.A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009).
2 R.A. Posner, Natural Monopoly and Its Regulation (Washington DC: Cato Institute, 1999).
C2019 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2019The Modern Law Review Limited. (2019) 82(5) MLR 951–965
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