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Guido Calabresi, The Future of Law and Economics: Comments and Reflections, Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1, December 2017, Pages 167–178, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrls/jlx027
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Extract
I
I am grateful to each of the commentators who have not only pushed the quest further but have also helped me to understand my own book better.1 Let me begin by explaining what I believe this book is about at its most general level; then, in the light of that, make some brief remarks about each of the papers here presented; and finally mention some specific contributions I believe the book makes as a result of its general approach.
At its broadest the book is about the relation of theory to empirical data. At this level it is not simply concerned with Economics and Law, but asks what one should do whenever some theoretical construct that seeks to explain human behavior or the world, runs into the fact that such behavior does not comport with the way the theory concludes that it should. All too often, scholars, we theoreticians, in situations of this sort then assert that the world, the way people behave, is wrong, irrational, nonsense, and should be changed. The book, using Bentham as the paradigm of such scholars, argues that this position is wrong, and that, when reality and theory diverge, the scholar must question the theory and ask whether it is nuanced or complete enough. In this respect, it is important to remember that the book names John Stuart Mill as the paradigm of this latter approach. That is, it uses a scholar, who, after reexamining the world and the theory, was, in fact, quite ready to conclude that the world, that human behavior, and its rules were indeed wrong and needed to be reformed. This book simply asks that one not make that conclusion without first reexamining the theory in the light of actual human behavior. And it suggests that sometimes, perhaps often, such reexamination leads to a more complete theory that may explain and perhaps justify not only these rules and that behavior but much other behavior as well.