PHIL 2050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Richard Posner, Harm Reduction, Market Failure
Document Summary
Law serves the goal of economic efficiency (wealth maximization). All laws are vehicles for reaching efficiency/ wealth maximization. The easiest way to achieve this is to own things and trade things. Three central claims: descriptive: some legal rules are efficient (some branches of law, all of common law, all law). Rules of contracts for example (they let us reach efficient agreements between one another: explanatory: the best explanation of why we have the laws we do is that they are efficient; their efficiency explains why we have them. Why do we have the rules that we have? the reason we have contract rules is because those rules are wealth maximizing. They use the principle of efficiency to explain the development of law: normative: we ought to have efficient rules. Efficiency is a value and efficient rules are justified. It is good that we have law to serve wealth.
