Law and Economics

More good reading

There has been a lot of discussion over the past year or so in blogs, faculty lounges, at conferences, and elsewhere on why academia is so very left-wing and, seemingly, out of step with the average sentiment in the US on lots of issues.  I have not a whisper of a shadow of a doubt that the typical US law school and university faculty are overwhelmingly politically left-leaning.  To take but one example, one would be hard pressed to find ten percent of the University of Illinois College of Law faculty (of approximately 35 good souls) willing to admit to having voted for George Bush (or for almost any Republican candidate for any office -- local, state, or federal).  (Nonetheless, I have felt that these differences are a bit exaggerated.) 

I have never found the reasons given for this state of affairs to be persuasive.  Why the center of gravity of law school and university faculties generally should be so far to the left of the general electorate remains a mystery to me.   

So, when Bill Stuntz, a distinguished scholar of criminal law issues at Harvard Law School, writes a wonderful pair of columns at Tech Central Station showing how the academic left and the Christian right can and should make common cause to address some vexing problems of domestic and international concern, I breathed a great sigh of relief and approbation.  You can find the more recent of Bill's columns here, including a link to the earlier column ("Faculty Clubs and Church Pews"). 

Let us fervently hope that some method of bridging this political gap so as to address these issues arises soon. 

TSU

Reform in England

Happy New Year! 

The year-end issue of The Economist contains an interesting short article (available here) on the report from a governmental commission about reform of the legal profession in England.  Sir David Clementi, chairman of Prudential, chaired the Legal Services Review.  (The full report is available here.)  The Economist characterizes Sir David's view of the profession as follows:

[He] persists in the view -- a perverse one, as far as some in the legal profession are concerned -- that lawyers exist mostly to sell services to consumers, and that they don't do so very well. 

The Review suggests that the English legal profession has many anticompetitive aspects and practices that should be reformed.  For example, complaints against solicitors and barristers should not be heard and resolved by committees of those professions but, rather, by independent panels.  Moreover, solicitors and barristers should be allowed to set up offices together and to take investment funds to do so from outside the legal profession.  Finally, to prevent future anticompetitive practices an independent governmental regulator, the Legal Services Board, should have oversight of the profession. 

These reforms are intriguing but not so obviously sound that they command assent.  It will come as no surprise that the Bar Council, the professional association of barristers, and the Law Society, that of solicitors, have both had extensive criticisms.  (The Bar Council's website is here; the Law Society's criticisms of the Clementi report are here.)   

TSU