ABSTRACT
The past twenty years have produced a substantial literature suggesting the relevance of economic principles to the analysis of legal processes.1 A seminal line of inquiry has evaluated the proposition that the common law, despite its diversity, is founded upon a unifying principle: courts behave rationally as if to achieve economic efficiency.2 To explain why these efficient outcomes are likely, Rubin,3 Landes and Posner,4 and Goodman5 have proposed evolutionary models where efficiency is most likely to result if the opposing parties have symmetric, ongoing interests in cases of the sort being disputed.6
