Ethical foundations of the left

Michael McIntyre mmcintyr at wppost.depaul.edu
Thu Jul 26 08:51:37 PDT 2001


I take a phrase like "he's the leading legal theorist in America" to be a quasi-performative. If I were to say, for example, "Pierre Bourdieu is the leading social theorist in France," I would be inviting you to read Bourdieu and see for yourself how great he is, not staking out a position that no one could make a case for, say, Raymond Boudon. Which do you mean here, Justin? That if I read Posner I'll see for myself that he's pretty damned good, maybe even the best? Or that no one else is a contender for the crown?

I'll grant that Posner has branched out from his home base in the Law & Economics crowd, but it seems to me that L&E is still his principal claim to fame. Last term, when I was teaching "Alternatives to Global Capitalism", I assigned Joe Stiglitz's "Whither Socialism?" as the text designed to make my students wonder whether any kind of socialism was possible, market or no. It didn't work so well for that purpose; John Roemer was right that it really only works against the Lange-Lerner version of damned-little-market socialism. But it did thoroughly discredit the L&E stuff, in my eyes. U of C law profs, with no particular expertise in economics, choosing to believe what the econ faculty told them about efficient markets, seems to be the genesis of this school. Socialism aside, if you think that the future of economics lies with studies of imperfect markets a la Stiglitz and quasi-rational actors a la Thaler, then the L&E school, a fortiori Posner, have hitched their wagon ! to a sinking star.

(Can we send this into the New Yorker's block that metaphor department?)

Michael McIntyre


>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 07/26/01 10:30 AM >>>

He's contrarian and likes to take shocking positions. I think he's usually a very good judge, and he's the leadig legal theorist in America. It's hard for me to see how anyone could defend Bush v. Gore, which I regard as worse, legally speaking, than Dred Scott v. Sanford, but if anyone can make it sedem less than disgraceful, it would be Posner. He is definitely worth reading. he is cultivated, literate, interesting, a fine stylist with a lively mind, and always provocative. I don't think he's dishonest, but he _is_ a Republican. --jks



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