Conclusion
Thus, consistent with the ideas, the recurring themes and the formulations of the legal realists and institutional economists of the day, Hale’s work was very much a challenge to and critique of the dominant tradition of laissez- faire capitalism.
Hale expressed concern over the distribution and structure of freedom, coercion and opportunity, held an antipathy towards the unquestioned acceptance of orthodoxy, and maintained an affection for pluralist democracy (Samuels, 1973, p. 272). As compared to the more dominant view, Hale had a very different conception of the interrelations between the economy and the law which led him to emphasize the need for the development of economic and legal theory that would help make clear interconnections between these two domains (Hale, 1923b).Hale’s writings
Books
Hale, Robert Lee (1935-47), Course Materials for Legal Factors in Economic Society (1st edn 2 vols, 1935; 2nd edn 3 vols, 1937; 3rd edn 2 vols, 1940; 4th edn 1946; 5th edn 1947).
Hale, Robert Lee (1952), Freedom Through Law: Public Control of Private Governing Power, New York: Columbia University Press.
Articles and chapters
Hale, Robert Lee (1917), ‘The concentration of wealth: discussion’, American Economic Review,
7, 174-5.
Hale, Robert Lee (1920), ‘Law making by unofficial minorities’, Columbia Law Review, 20, 451-6.
Hale, Robert Lee (1921), ‘The “physical value” fallacy in rate cases’, Yale Law Journal, 30, 710-31.
Hale, Robert Lee (1922a), ‘Rate making and the revision of the property concept’, Columbia Law Review, 22, 209-16.
Hale, Robert Lee (1922b), ‘Political and economic review’, American Bar Association Journal,
8, 752-3.
Hale, Robert Lee (1923a), ‘Coercion and distribution in a supposedly non-coercive state’, Political Science Quarterly, 38, 470-94.
Hale, Robert Lee (1923b), ‘Economic considerations in the restatement and clarification of the law’, Proceedings of the Academy ofPolitical Science, 10, 50-54.
Hale, Robert Lee (1924), ‘Economic theory and the statesman’, in R.G. Tugwell (ed.), The Trend of Economics, New York: Knopf, pp. 189-225.
Hale, Robert Lee (1925), ‘Labor legislation as an enlargement of industrial liberty’, American Labor Legislative Review, 15, 155-60.
Hale, Robert Lee (1925-26), ‘Pseudo-protection of property in rate cases’, Michigan Law Review, 24, 166-70.
Hale, Robert Lee (1927a), ‘Economics and Law’, in W.F. Ogburn and A. Goldenweiser (eds), The Social Sciences and Their Interrelations, London: Allen & Unwin, pp. 131-42.
Hale, Robert Lee (1927b), ‘Value and vested rights’, Columbia Law Review, 27, 523-9.
Hale, Robert Lee (1932), ‘Labor law - Anglo American’, in Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, vol 8, New York: Macmillan, pp. 667-72.
Hale, Robert Lee (1934a), ‘The constitution and the price system: some reflections on Nebbia v. New York∖ Columbia Law Review, 34, 401-25.
Hale, Robert Lee (1934b), ‘The new supreme court test of confiscatory rates’, Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, 10, 307-13.
Hale, Robert Lee (1935a), ‘Force and the state: a comparison of “political” and “economic” compulsion’, Columbia Law Review, 35, 149-201.
Hale, Robert Lee (1935b), ‘Unconstitutional conditions and constitutional rights’, Columbia Law Review, 35, 321-59.
Hale, Robert Lee (1939a), ‘The “fair value” merry-go-round - 1898-1938: a forty year journey
Robert Lee Hale (1884-1969) - legal economist 543 from rates-based-on-value to value-based-on-rates’, Illinois Law Review of Northwestern University, 33, 517-31.
Hale, Robert Lee (1939b), ‘Our equivocal constitutional guaranties’, Columbia Law Review, 39, 563-94.
Hale, Robert Lee (1940), ‘Commissions, rates and policies’, Harvard Law Review, 53, 110344.
Hale, Robert Lee (1942), ‘Does the ghost of Smyth v. Ames still walk?’, Harvard Law Review, 55, 1116-40.
Hale, Robert Lee (1943), ‘Bargaining, duress and economic liberty’, Columbia Law Review, 43, 603-28.
Hale, Robert Lee (1944a), ‘The Supreme Court and the contract clause’, Harvard Law Review, 57 (Clause I, II & III, 512-57, 621-74, 852-92).
Hale, Robert Lee (1944b), ‘Utility regulation in the light of the Hope natural gas case’, Columbia Law Review, 44, 488-530.
Hale, Robert Lee (1946), ‘Prima facie torts, combination and non-feasance’, Columbia Law Review, 46, 196-218.
Hale, Robert Lee (1959), ‘Book review: The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Eixamination of the Concept of Freedom, by M.J. Adler’, Columbia Law Review, 59, 821-37.
Notes
1. This overview draws heavily on Samuels (1973) and Duxbury (1990).
2. The influence of these three individuals on Hale’s work is documented in Duxbury (1990, p. 423).
3. This discussion of Powell draws on Braeman (1988) and Urofsky (1989).
4. Tyson & Bro v. Banton, 273 US 418 (1927), where a majority of the US Supreme Court held unconstitutional a New York statute limiting the resale price of theatre tickets to 50 cents in excess of the actual box office price.
5. Hale struggled with using the term ‘coercion’, considering at times ‘compulsion’, ‘pressure’, ‘force’, ‘influence’, ‘duress’ and even ‘oppression’. Taken non-pejoratively, coercion, compulsion and force capture the essence of the idea being conveyed.
6. Duxbury (1990, p. 435, n. 127), quoting Hale, has written that ‘To the conventional eye... governing power is invisible save when exerted by public officials, wearing the authentic trappings of the political state’.
7. In addition to the themes outlined below, Hale influenced John Maurice Clark’s work on social control, as evidenced in Clark (1926 [1939]), and Samuels’s (1992) analysis of the economic role of government.
8. More extensive surveys of American institutional law and economics can be found in Mercuro and Medema (1997), which also surveys the various other schools of thought now comprising the field of law and economics, and Medema et al. (1999).
References
Bell, John F.
(1967), ‘Institutional economics’, in A History of Economic Thought, New York: Ronald Press, pp. 539-71.Braeman, John (1988), ‘Thomas Reed Powell on the Roosevelt Court’, Constitutional Commentary, 5 (1), 143-7.
Cahn, Edmond (1953), ‘Book review: Freedom Through Law’ New York Times, 18 January, p. 14.
Clark, John Maurice (1926), Social Control of Business, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2nd edn, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939.
Cotterrell, Roger (1989), The Politics of Jurisprudence, London: Butterworths.
Dorfman, Joseph (1961), The Economic Mind in American Civilization, Volumes IV and V: 1918- 1933, New York, Viking Press; reprinted New York: Kelley, 1969.
Duxbury, Neil (1990), ‘Robert Hale and the economy of legal force’, Modern Law Review, 53, July, 421-44.
Duxbury, Neil (1995), Patterns of American Jurisprudence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb (1923), Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, ed., W.W. Cook, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Medema, Steven G., Nicholas Mercuro and Warren J. Samuels (1999), ‘Institutional law and economics’, in B. Bouckaert and G. de Geest (eds), Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 418-55.
Mercuro, Nicholas and Steven G. Medema (1997), Economics and the Law: From Posner to Post-Modernism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Posner, Richard A. (1995), Overcoming Law, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Samuels, Warren J. (1973), ‘The economy as a system of power and its legal basis: the legal economics of Robert Hale’, University of Miami Law Review, 27, Spring & Summer, 261371.
Samuels, Warren J. (1992), Essays on the Economic Role of Government, Vol. 1, New York: New York University Press.
Seligman, Ben B. (1963), Main Currents in Modern Economics, New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Srivastava, Sik (1965), History of Economic Thought, Delhi: Atma Ram & Sons.
Urofsky, Melvin I. (1989), ‘“Dear Teacher”: the correspondence of William O. Douglas and Thomas Reed Powell’, Law and History Review, 7(2), 331-86.
Veblen, Thorstein B. (1904), The Theory of Business Enterprise, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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