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Keynote Address: Is There a George Mason School of Law and Economics?

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Keynote Address: Is There a George Mason School of Law and Economics? KEYNOTE ADDRESS: IS THERE A GEORGE MASON SCHOOL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS? Todd J. Zywicki, George Mason University School of Law George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series 14-36 This paper is available on the Social Science Research Network at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2487266 KEYNOTE ADDRESS: IS THERE A GEORGE MASON SCHOOL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS? Todd J. Zywicki* Abstract: This article is the edited transcript of remarks provided in November 2013 on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the George Mason Law and Economics Center and the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the George Mason Journal of Law, Economics & Policy. The title of the conference was “The Unique Contributions of Armen Alchian, Robert Bork, and James Buchanan to the George Mason University School of Law.” In it I pose the question: “Is there a George Mason School of Law and Economics?” and I answer in the affirmative. I argue that the George Mason tradition of law and economics is a synthesis of multiple complementary schools of law and economics—Austrian, Chicago, UCLA, Virginia, and Washington—focused on spontaneous order, private ordering, dynamic market processes, and property rights. Given the subject of the conference, these remarks focus specifically on UCLA (Alchian), Chicago (Bork), and Virginia (Buchanan), but are not meant to discount the equally important influences of these complementary traditions. Well thank you Henry [Butler], and thank you everyone for coming out on this great occasion—which in everyone’s book is a very happy occasion, and in some sense a little bit of a sad occasion. It is a happy occasion because we are here to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Law and Economics Center (LEC), founded by Henry Manne at the University of Miami; it is also the 10th Anniversary of the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy (JLEP).1 I’ve been the faculty advisor since the journal was started up, and I remember the moment when that first happened. I do remember the founding of JLEP—I was eight when the LEC was founded, so I don’t remember that one, but I do remember the founding of JLEP— when one of my students came to me and said, “Professor Zywicki, this is the law and economics law school, isn’t it ridiculous that we don’t have a student run journal on law and economics?”2 * George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law; Senior Scholar, Mercatus Center at George Mason University; Editor, Supreme Court Economic Review, Faculty Adviser to the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy. I would like to thank Henry Butler and Henry Manne for many helpful comments and Chaim Mandelbaum for research assistance. 1 For a useful scholarly history of the Law and Economics Center, see STEVEN M. TELES, THE RISE OF THE CONSERVATIVE LEGAL MOVEMENT: THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE LAW (2008). 2 That student was Erik Newton who has fittingly gone onto a career as a serial entrepreneur. 1 And I said, “You know what, you’re right—that is ridiculous, go do something about it!” And sure enough he did; the journal has prospered in the intervening period and I think it has been an extraordinary addition to the George Mason University School of Law (GMUSL), and it is my privilege to be associated with it. One of the reasons why that incident was so significant to me was that it showed the way in which law and economics has become so embedded in the culture at George Mason; so much so that its students have come to embrace its place in the law school, and I think that the story of this journal’s founding is a really good symbol of that. Although of course it is also a little bit of a mixed occasion, because when they came and asked me for an idea for a symposium, I had just been looking through the masthead of the Supreme Court Economic Review (SCER). A lot of people on the faculty have been the editors of the (SCER): today it’s Michael Greve and Thomas Hazlett, before that it was Josh Wright and Ilya Somin, and before that it was a variety of George Mason University (GMU) professors, most notably Lloyd Cohen, Bruce Kobayashi, Dean Dan Polsby, and others. I was looking, and we lost these three titans of law and of law and economics, all of whom were on the board of advisors of the SCER. Bork, Alchian, and James Buchanan were all members of the SCER editorial board, and of course all three of them, as you heard this morning and will hear again this afternoon, made quite significant contributions to the GMUSL in their time. Alchian, of course, was the workhorse of the judicial education program. Judge Bork taught here in the 1980s—and I was trying to pin down the exact dates, so I asked Max Stearns, “do you know when Bork worked here?” And he said, “Yes, I do, because I was hired to replace him.” So he was here for a few years, and for many people the first time they ever heard of GMU was at the Supreme Court hearing in which he was occasionally identified as a GMUSL 2 Professor. And of course, Jim Buchanan, as Henry Manne suggested this morning, was very instrumental, first bringing the public choice center here to George Mason, and then in bringing Henry Manne himself to George Mason. The great combination and synergies we’ve had with the economics department and the Center for the Study of Public Choice are obviously part of the reason why the university has prospered. So I think, in looking forward and at where we are today, it’s important to look back at this. It might also be useful in framing my remarks, perhaps, to talk a little bit about myself and how I ended up here, because I think in many ways I might represent the second generation of GMUSL. How I ended up here is an example of how Henry Manne, as the Johnny Appleseed of law and economics, planted trees of law and economics around the country that have come to fruition in the current generation of law and economics scholars, which include myself, Josh Wright, Geoffrey Manne, Max Stearns, and many others. I first got into this world by working as an intern at the Foundation for Economic Education and the Institute of Humane Studies, where I discovered the Austrians and the public choice school, and as a result of that I did my undergraduate thesis on Hayek. At the time, on the entire Dartmouth campus I couldn’t find a single professor who knew a single thing about Hayek, which I think is a statement in itself. Somewhere there I met Don Boudreaux and we started a long relationship where Don has introduced me to a lot of ideas and we took turns being at Clemson. After college I ended up at Clemson, which was a pinnacle moment for me partly because Clemson itself is a satellite of what Henry Manne had set up. There I met Dan Benjamin, who we heard from this morning, Roger Meiners, Bob Staaf, and others; all of whom had some contact with the LEC and ended up teaching in economics programs. So we’re talking about law schools today but there is a whole other body, which is those economists who came through Henry Manne’s Olin Fellows program 3 at Miami and Emory, as well as the Economics for Law Professors program. I didn’t know that much about Clemson, so Roger Meiners said the guy you need to talk to is Fred McChesney. Fred McChesney sold me on going to Clemson to get my master’s degree in economics and to study with these guys, and I’ve been blessed personally as he is a great friend and intellectual mentor. I think my experience at Clemson shows the hybrid that emerged at GMU. I was exposed to the Chicago Tradition through guys like Bill Dugan and Donald Gordon; Public Choice by a lot of guys from Virginia, Virginia Tech, and GMU; the UCLA Tradition by Dan Benjamin, Matt Lindsey and others; and the Washington Tradition of Douglass North, which is the one notable absence on today’s program. I was talking to Terry Anderson here today about how, I guess in some sense, it is unfortunate for the Washington Tradition that Douglass North couldn’t be part of this conversation because that tradition has been an important part of the George Mason school, as best personified today by Bruce Johnsen. From there I went to University of Virginia (UVA) law school and encountered the first generation of people that Henry Manne sent through his summer program—people like Bob Scott and Tom Jackson who were members of that first generation of law and economics—and then here to GMU to teach. I should also specifically mention my law school antitrust professor Charlie Goetz, who was affiliated with the public choice center at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI), then moved to UVA where he was the first pure economist in the law school and co-authored with Bob Scott many of the foundational articles in the economic analysis of contract law, and was a frequent lecturer in the LEC’s judicial education seminars. Somewhere in there was an important part of this story—the creation of the Federalist Society, which has helped propagate law and economics generally and to retail the ideas of law and economics to students across the country.
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