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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Gillian K Hadfield

Selected Works

Comparative law and economics

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Strategy Of Methodology: The Virtues Of Being Reductionist For Comparative Law, Gillian K. Hadfield Dec 2008

The Strategy Of Methodology: The Virtues Of Being Reductionist For Comparative Law, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

In this comment I respond to three comments by comparative legal scholars on my paper "Levers of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants of the Quality of Law." In this comment I respond to concerns about the potential for the reductionist methodology employed by economist to illuminate issues in comparative law, particularly in light of commitments in comparative legal scholarship to deep understanding of culture and respect for different legal systems.


The Levers Of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants Of The Quality Of Law, Gillian K. Hadfield Dec 2007

The Levers Of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants Of The Quality Of Law, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

In the past decade a comparative law and economics literature has emerged that is largely organized around an effort to explain differences in country economic performance in terms of differences between common law and civil code systems. Assumptions about differences between common law and civil code regimes and the correspondence between legal regimes and judicial behavior are, however, still only weakly based in real institutional features of modern legal systems. In this paper, I examine the institutional determinants of the quality of law developed by a legal regime, drawing on a model from Hadfield (2006) which identifies five key parameters …