Tom Ulen on the Future Trajectory of Law and Economics

I have just returned from the 5th Annual Conference of the Asian Law and Economics Association held at Seoul, Korea. Tom Ulen was one of the two keynote speakers at the conference, the other being Isaac Ehrlich.

A few points stood up from Tom's talk. Law schools should recast their role as the place which teaches and researches social governance, since law is viewed as an important tool for social goverance. More importantly, law is the one field which opens its door to other social sciences, while other fields are having territorial fights. Tom cites the example of his institution, the Law School at the University of Illinois, as evidence. All recent faculty recruits now have a Ph.D, and since there are no Ph.Ds in law from American law schools, all these Ph.Ds are in other social sciences such as economics, sociology, political science and philosophy. The fact is, the American law school is the place where scholars with diverse academic background converge to jointly think about social issues.

Another point Tom raised in a discussion was the potential prominence of the Empirical Legal Studies movement, potentially surpassing Law and Economics. Unlike the Law and Economics movement which has its own ideological baggage, the ELS movement is to a large extent ideologically free. Sociologists, political scientists, economists and statisticians could all contribute to the ELS movement with their own techniques, knowledge and underlying philosophy with less conflict. I foresee that ELS could be more important in British law schools than Law and Economics could ever dream of. For example, the Facult of Law in UCL under Dame Hazel Genn has renamed their Centre for Socio-Legal Studies to Centre for Empirical Legal Studies to reflect the current shift of emphasis.