Year: 1976
Type: article
Abstract: The use of precedents to create rules of legal obligation has, to our knowledge, received little theoretical or empirical analysis. This paper presents and tests empirically an economic approach to legal precedent that is derived mainly from the analysis of capital formation and investment. We treat the body of legal precedents created by judicial decisions in prior periods as a capital stock that yields a flow of information services which depreciates over time as new conditions arise that were not foreseen by the framers of the existing precedents. New (and replacement) capital is created by investment in the production of precedents.
Source: The Journal of Law and Economics
DOI: 10.1086/466868
Authors: William M. Landes, Richard A. Posner
Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, University of Chicago
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2148306230