Essay Legal Scholars, Economists, and the Interdisciplinary Study of Institutions

This Essay does not focus on legal theory in law schools, the common core of legal scholarship as practiced in law schools, nor the trend towards interdisciplinary research as reflected in the “law and” movements in law schools. Rather, it looks outside of law schools, law reviews, and internal legal discourse. It examines the role that legal scholars play in interdisciplinary debates on legal issues. Do they attend such debates, and if so, do these scholars offer a unique voice based on legal theory or on other tools or sensitivities provided by the legal discipline? The last three decades have witnessed an institutional turn in the social sciences. While the turn was manifest in political science, history, and sociology, its strongest hold was in economics. Economists turned their attention from markets to institutions, including legal institutions. The institutional turn, which was mostly due to the influence of Nobel Laureate Douglass North, had historical inclinations. Attention turned to the development of impersonal exchange in prestate settings, to the rise of states that credibly respect property rights, and to the evolution of market infrastructures. The award of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 to Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, and to Oliver Williamson, a professor of business, economics, and law, suggests that the institutional turn is still vibrant and challenging traditional disciplinary boundaries.1 This Essay raises the notion that scholars from other disciplines, particularly economics, have taken the