Discourse and the Institutional Approach to Law and Economics: Factors That Separate the Institutional Approach to Law and Economics From Alternative Approaches
The importance of the rhetoric of economics has recently been realized in the work of such authors as Donald N. McCloskey [McCloskey 1985] and Arjo Klamer [Klamer 1983, 1987]. Economics is seen to advocate a point of view or ideology, as discourse and not necesssarily truth. Recognition of the channeling, obfuscation, selective perception, and fictions involved in economic discourse is necessary for a complete analysis of economic models and their policy prescriptions. This article explores the rhetoric of the interrelations between legal and economic processes as expounded in neoclassical law and economics, critical legal studies, and neo-institutional law and economics. Space limitations preclude anything more than a taste of the rhetoric involved in each approach.