300190 "Law & Econonics" Contribution to Modern Social Thought (AB1 - Theory Class) (S) (WiSe 2019/2020)

This seminar will give you a very specific and almost one-sided introduction into the field of „law & economics“, perhaps the most influential intellectual development in the area of law in the last one hundred years and at the same time a pretty general theory of society – a theory not jet taken account of by main-stream sociology. However, and to put it bluntly, this seminar will approach this field from a slightly skeptical, perhaps kind of left-wing perspective, tracing the methodological fault lines that lie below the surface of the discipline of „law & economics“. It will be arranged around reading Kaushik Basu´s new book „The Republic of Beliefs“ (Princeton 2018). Coming from economics and game theory Basu asks some foundational questions about the efficacy of the law and puts forward a focal point approach to understand legal institutions. Basu pinpoints the challenge to make the expectations we hold vis-a-vis each other converge as the major task or function of the law.

Though placing itself within the law and economic perspective, this book makes no special demands in terms of either mathematics or prior familiarity with legal terminology. Should you feel that legal or economic concerns are relevant to your research this seminar should offer further inspiration and useful conceptual tools.

Up to now, the idea is, to have weekly meetings. However, should this suite you better, we might easily arrange this seminar in a different way, having classes every other week or convening in two or three larger blocks on weekends.

Requirements for participation, required level

Dear Students,
from hence on the seminar will take place a lttle earlier, that is between 3 and 4 pm, and we will meet in my office (C4- 220).

Yours,
Kay Junge

Bibliography

Kaushik Basu, The Republic of Beliefs, Princeton 2018