[In: Volume 7, Francesco Parisi (ed) Production of Legal Rules]

In recent years literature in law and economics directed its attention to the study of law as a product. These contributions are of great theoretical and practical importance. This volume collects original contributions from several scholars that have been protagonists in this trend in the literature. Viewed in its entirety, this volume provides comprehensive coverage of alternative sources of law, such as legislation, judge-made law, custom, and treaty law. Individual chapters focus on the characteristics of specific instruments of legal intervention and on broader topics such as conflict of law, federalism, regulatory competition, and law and development. Selecting topics for inclusion in this volume was far from easy. The final selection hopefully strikes a good balance between the need for systematic coverage and practical relevance.

The volume is divided into five parts. Part I includes chapters on the economics of legislation and regulation. The first chapter by Stefan Voigt covers issues of constitutional design of lawmaking. The second chapter by Louis Kaplow discusses the general characteristics of legal rules. In the following chapters, Barbara Luppi and Francesco Parisi detail the optimal specificity of laws and the distinction between rules and standards, Nita Ghei discusses the optimal timing of legal intervention, and Georg von Wangenheim analyzes the production of legal rules by agencies and bureaucracies.

Part II of this volume considers judge-made law, with original contributions by Paul H. Rubin on the economics of judge-made law, Todd Zywicki and Edward Peter Stringham on the efficiency of the common law hypothesis, Jeff De Mot on the study of bias in the common law, and Carmine Guerriero on the empirical evidence regarding the effect of legal systems on economic performance.

Part III considers social norms and customary law. Topics covered in this section range from Richard McAdams’ treatment of expressive law to Emanuela Carbonara, Francesco Parisi and Georg von Wangenheim’s exploration of countervailing norms. Michael Faure and Laarni Escresa add a discussion of the role of social stigma in legal compliance, while Anthony Ogus and Emanuela Carbonara cover self-regulation.

Part IV considers the economics of international law, with Paul Stephan’s general chapter on international law as a source of law, and specific chapters on the economics of international treaties by Vincy Fon, customary international law by Jef De Mot, Vincy Fon and Francesco Parisi, and international organizations by Alexander Thompson and Duncan Snidal.

p. ixPart V concludes this volume with an analysis of topics relating to federalism, legal harmonization and development. Contributions include Robert P. Inman and Daniel L. Rubinfeld’s economics of federalism, legal harmonization by Enrico Baffi and Paolo Santella, forum shopping and the evolution of choice of law by Nita Ghei, regulatory competition by Jonathan Klick, and Robert D. Cooter and Hans-Bernd Schäfer’s growth-oriented legal reforms.

This collection of original contributions by leading scholars in the field contributes to a more systematic understanding of lawmaking as a production process emphasizing the respective advantages and proper scope of application of alternative sources law. The contributions to this volume will hopefully shed new light on the important issue of the institutional design of lawmaking through the lens of economic analysis and public choice theory.