LIABILITY, PRAGMATISM AND ECONOMICS

Abstract

The article considers the concept of legal liability and shows how pragmatist legal thinkers (1) reshaped it in the light of their philosophical externalism and (2) developed an economic analysis of it that is certainly stimulating but raises some serious concerns. The main characters of this story are Oliver Holmes for the classical pragmatist reshaping of the concept, and Learned Hand and Richard Posner for the more recent economic analysis of it. The paper suggests that, despite those concerns, that pragmatist reshaping was, and still is, welcome.