ABSTRACT
John R. Commons' Legal Foundations of Capitalism was published in 1924 for the purpose of presenting his "volitional theory of value". J. M. Clark's Social Control of Business was published in 1926 as a textbook in a series entitled "Material for the Study of Business," edited by Professor L. C. Marshall, as part of an "experiment" with the curriculum in Business Administration at the University of Chicago. The difference between their backgrounds is one of several important factors accounting for the difference between the paths Commons and Clark took in arriving at their own conceptions of the relationship between law and economics. Commons asserted: "The economists of each stage attempted to get rid of human will and to explain economic phenomena as the working out of natural forces, either foreordained or blind. The philosophy of science expounded by Commons in the passages quoted above was also stated in 1931 in New Republic by John Dewey.
