ABSTRACT
Over the last four decades, a variety of legal movements and theories have evolved to make the study of law less autonomous and more open.1 These several jurisprudential movements advocate different jurisprudential discourses and understandings of modern law. Each movement writes and thinks about law differently; each maintains a different conception of adjudication and practice. These movements include critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, law and literature, critical race theory, and the several schools of thought comprising Law & Economics.2 The latter of these-Law & Economics-has developed from a small and rather esoteric branch of research within both economics and the law to what is now a substantial movement that has, on the one hand, helped to redefine the study of law and, on the other hand, exposed economics to the important economic implications of the legal environment.3 Today, almost all American legal scholars, judges, and lawyers hold some instrumental view of the law and recognize, in various degrees, that Law & Economics occupies an important jurisprudential niche in law.
