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
First Page
875
Publisher
The George Washington University Law School
Keywords
economics
Disciplines
Law
Recommended Citation
Jeanne L. Schroeder,
Economic Rationality, Empathy, and Corporate Responsibility,
70
Geo. Wash. L. Rev.
875
(2002).
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-articles/389
