Abstract

This is not another "law-and-econ" bashing symposium. Nor is the symposium's title intended to denigrate Chicago School law and economics any more than the term "Post-Keynesian economics" was intended to denigrate the work of John Maynard Keynes. Instead, this symposium marks the fact that many practitioners of law and economics have moved well beyond the stereotypes familiar to most legal academics. Rather than designating an entirely new school of thought, the term "Post-Chicago law and economics" refers to a new era in which a variety of new questions about law and lawmaking is being asked and a variety of promising economic techniques is being used to answer them. Yet most legal academics who, like me, are not part of the law and economics movement are generally unaware of these changes. The purpose of this "Symposium on Post-Chicago Law and Economics" is to bring some of these new methods and questions to the attention of mainstream legal academics and others. The hope is that those who have shunned the economic analysis of law in the past may wish to reconsider their stance in light of what Post-Chicago law and economics has to offer. To facilitate this, the author uses this Foreword to summarize the new directions suggested by each of the symposium contributors, most of whom are practitioners of law and economics.