Social meaning and social norms.(Symposium: Law, Economics, & Norms)

Publication: University of Pennsylvania Law Review

Publication Date: 01-MAY-96

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COPYRIGHT 1996 University of Pennsylvania, Law School

The virtue of economics is its economy. Its sparse ontology. Its simplicity. With a few blocks, it aims to build the world. And with a few blocks, it has built much. Becker-ized or Posner-ized, economics has given insight into the full range of human life, with very few conceptual tools. There have been critics those who complain that too much is missed; that the reduction is-not without loss; that what is essential has-been lost. But in large measure, these complaints miss the mark. One does not mind pocket-sized maps, so long as they guide reasonably well.

Sometimes they do not. Sometimes this sparseness and simplicity make one miss someting important. New blocks are then needed. Some see these gaps as pathology--evincing a rotten core in economics's foundations. But economics does not need a foundation; we need not worry whether we can describe its core. When Russell pointed out the flaw in Frege's derivation of the foundations to mathematics, the math curriculum in elementary schools did not charge much. Arithmetic goes on perfectly well without foundations. Economics can as well.)

Gaps do invite something more, however, and this push suggests two kinds of supplement. One is the supplement of Posner: small additions to the-core ontology, deployed to pragmatic ends.(2) The other is the supplements of Elster or Hardin: large additions to this core ontology; whole new classes of stuff; social norms, for example, that supplement talk of individual preferences as a way to understand behavior that does not quite fit talk limited to individual

preferences.(3) The articles of tints Symposium are in the tradition of this second supplement. They aim to work out social norm talk, consistent with the tradition of economics or rational choice that they inherit.(4) The aim is compatibility-the effort to show that this richer ontology is consistent with the sparseness of the old. The technique is to link the new methods with the old.

This is also the focus of tile two articles that I was asked to review for this Symposium. Dennis Chong's article, especially, is an effort to help the old school along. In its breadth, it offers comfort to the old school, for it sketches how an extraordinary range of otherwise "non-economic" phenomena might nonetheless fit an economic account.(5) Richard Hasen's article is more targeted: It picks one puzzle for the classical theory (why people vote) and shows how this richer ontology might solve this puzzle.(6) In both cases, the suggestion is that we can be excused for adding social norm talk to the account, because the norm talk will advance our understanding of human behavior, without rejecting what went before.

I have nothing against this respect for (intellectual) elders. Economics has a tradition one ought to respect. But I am a lawyer, and lawyers have few respectable elders. Law is not a science, and in the main, our elders are a generation who proclaimed that there were no elders. Lawyers are intellectual orphans.

The orphan has a freedom that the child does not, and it is from this position of relative freedom that I want to argue that something more will be needed here. This supplemental norm talk is a nice first move, but it will not be enough. We will not understand the phenomena upon which this Symposium focuses, and more importantly, we will not know how to regulate it,...

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