For your Saturday, I thought I'd share a post from the U.S. Intellectual History Blog by Sara Mayeux, who is currently a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Sara looks at law and economics from the perspective of intellectual history, asking "how did law and economics go from an oddball preoccupation of a few
Chicago professors to one of the dominant intellectual frameworks for
thinking and talking about law?" You will think, of course, that Steven Teles already answered the question, but Sara compares Teles' work with landmark intellectual historian Dan Rodgers' Age of Fracture, and also legal historian Brad Snyder.
Sara writes, in part, that "In contrast to Teles’s emphasis on particular personalities and
institutions, Daniel Rodgers paints law and economics as one detail in a
larger panorama." Meanwhile "Brad Snyder composes a rock-and-roll ballad of generational rebellion,
in which law and economics was one of many shiny ’60s alternatives to
the stodgy proceduralism of legal scholars past." And then Sara synthesizes these different approaches to causality. Her synthesis, all the links you need, and wonderful writing can be found here. Hat tip to Sam Moyn (@Peiresc @saramayeux). And if you've ever wondered why scholars ever use Twitter, now you know. (@marydudziak)