Documents on Government and the Economy: Volume 30 Part 2

Muchof this volume of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology considers the contributions made by Warren J. Samuels to economic methodology, law and economics, and the history of economic thought. A brief biographical profile of Samuels is provided in the Volume 30A this year. Samuels established the A volume of RHETM as a place for longer articles, detailed book reviews, and other documents that did not fit into the standard journal article format. Later, the B and C volumes were created to preserve and publish archival document. Samuels remembers that “a goodly number of items…[were] given to me by Ed Witte in May/June 1957 when he was trying to lighten his load as he retired; I graduated [at] the same time…the original obstacle I faced was that some of our teachers and students [were] fearful of embarrassing themselves. I can assure you that this problem has not materialized” (Samuels by email, May 18, 2011).

Politics and judicial decisions have in some fashion been conducted in the United States (and elsewhere) as a contest between adversaries. The legal representatives of the two parties articulate the competing sets of claims generally in a manner that represents the legal or jurisprudential version of their clients’ respective attitudes. The judge(s) who hear the case and the justices who consider the appeals also tend to do likewise. A “final” decision by the United States Supreme Court (or any State appellate court) and any dissenters to a majority decision will very likely be composed of similar language.

The two sets of notes, taken only three years apart are substantially similar in organization and content. We document differences identified in a line-by-line comparison in Table 1. Generally, the 1996 course notes reproduced here more prominently feature the work of legal scholars, from Oliver Wendell Holmes to St. George Tucker. Curiously, many of these references were removed from the later version, as well as nearly all discussion on legal precedent established by Supreme Court cases. The overall effect of these changes is a marked shift away from a critical legal studies approach to the economic role of government and toward a more focused neoclassical lens.

X = multiple interpretations

I. Introduction to the Study of the Economic Role of Government: Alternative Approaches to Law and Economics