Publication Date

2002

Journal

George Washington Law Review

Abstract

Judge Richard A. Posner - the doyen of the law and economics movement - is probably the leading proponent of the hypothesis that legal subjects act as if they were economically rational. Over the years, however, Posner's conception of rationality has devolved from end-means reasoning by a conscious individual human actor, to unconscious instinct which is, nevertheless, beneficial to an individual subject (animal or human) to the mechanistic reproductive activity of individual genes which may or may not be beneficial to either the organism of which the gene is a part - or even to the gene itself. Indeed, all that seems to be left of the "rational" component of Posnerian rationality might be the positive normative connotations of the term itself.

Volume

70

Issue

5 & 6

First Page

875

Last Page

885

Publisher

The George Washington University Law School

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Economics

Comments

Symposium: Corporate Irresponsibility: America's Newest Export

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