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Tullock on the common law: a loose-cannon iconoclast in action?

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Abstract

Gordon Tullock has been celebrated as an innovative thinker in many areas of public choice. He was also among the first to analyze the law based on the economic approach, yet, his contributions to Law and Economics have been met with skepticism or even outright ignorance. In this paper, I focus on Tullock’s papers dealing with the common law and argue that they contain important insights that have been ignored in the debate regarding legal origins.

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Notes

  1. Besides the reviews already cited above, this point is also made by Rose-Ackerman 1987.

  2. For Tullock’s contributions to Law and Economics, I am relying on volume 9 of his Selected Works as edited by Charles Rowley.

  3. It is the function of models to simplify. This model can, however, be criticized for overdoing it on various grounds.

  4. The other six are (1) professionals vs. laymen; (2) legal justification, (3) statutory regulation of evidence, (4) comprehensive appeal procedures, (5) engagement formalities, and (6) independent procedural actions.

  5. In Voigt (2008), a number of caveats to this conclusion are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Maximilian Gercke for excellent research assistance and Lukas Böker, Jerg Gutmann, Julia Lemke, Stephan Michel, Katharina Pfaff, Konstantinos Pilpilidis, and Agnes Strauss as well as a referee of this journal for constructive critique.

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  1. Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg and CESifo, Johnsallee 35, 20148, Hamburg, Germany

    Stefan Voigt

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  1. Stefan Voigt
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Correspondence to Stefan Voigt.

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Voigt, S. Tullock on the common law: a loose-cannon iconoclast in action?. Const Polit Econ 28, 35–47 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-016-9231-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-016-9231-9

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