ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore issues related to value pluralism as a case study of how debates in Law and Economics can profitably engage with ethical theory. Typically, economic approaches to the law rely on some form of consequentialist, efficiency-based reasoning, in which we aim to maximize or increase well-being or goodness. But in a recent book, Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina propose an alternative of moderate deontology (or “threshold deontology”), in which there are obligations to promote the good overall, but there are also deontological constraints – constraints which are to be overridden when thresholds are met. Echoing debates in ethical theory, critics have charged that moderate deontology rests on arbitrary judgments and that addressing this problem of arbitrariness requires a monistic meta-theory, ultimately causing moderate deontology to collapse into a version of consequentialism. While Zamir and Medina have aptly defended their approach, I draw on research in ethical theory, including my own work on value pluralism and moral reasoning, to give a stronger defense of moderate deontology and to suggest that engagement with ethical theory allows for a deeper analysis of issues concerning plural values in the Law and Economics context.
