Economics and Sociology: The Prospects for an Interdisciplinary Discourse of Law

My purposes in this essay are two-fold. First, I provide some background on the disciplines of economics and sociology as a basis for the discussion at this Symposium and for my own discussion of the potential for an interdisciplinary discourse on law. In this regard, in the first section of the essay I provide a brief history of the relationship between the two disciplines, a brief outline of the basic characteristics of each disciplinary perspective, and a brief discussion of the emerging opportunities for useful exchange between the two disciplines. Second, I examine the prospects that the economic analysis of law can be usefully informed by sociological perspectives. I examine just this portion of the possible discourse between the two disciplines because, as a law and economics scholar, it is this portion of the discourse that I feel most competent to address. I leave it to my colleagues who study law from a sociological perspective to discern what can be gleaned from the economic perspective that is of most use to them in their analysis