Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Fallacies about Economic Analysis of Law

Publication at Faculty of Law |
2015

Abstract

In his essay, the author deals with fallacies about economics and its application to law held amongst Czech lawyers. The opening assumption is that existence of these fallacies is one of the causes of the hitherto limited proliferation of economic analysis of law in the Czech legal environment.

The essay identifies five individual fallacies, explains the essence of each fallacy, sheds light on its origin and describes how it causes rejection of economic analysis of law. First, a belief is held that economics is a science about economy even though in reality the object of its interest is wider.

Second, a belief is held that economics is a science about money even though in reality money constitutes a marginal object of interest of economics and it is rather used in the framework of economic methodology. Third, a belief is held that, according to economics, law is useless with regard to attainment of economic efficiency even though in reality, according to economics, there are several ways of how the law can contribute to attainment of economic efficiency.

Fourth, a belief is held that economic analysis of law always relates to economic efficiency of law even though in reality there are varieties of economic analyses that have nothing to do with efficiency. Fifth, a belief is held that economic analysis is an exclusive approach to law even though in reality nothing prevents it from being combined with other approaches to law.