The interrelations between legal and economic processes: a consideration of the reactions

The responses to my 1972 article on the interrelations between legal and economic processes are summarized and critiqued. The principal authors are James Buchanan, Peter Boettke, and William Fischell. My replies center on the normative character of their proposed alternative interpretations vis-à-vis my strictly positive approach. My positivist approach considers law as made rather than found; that law is not something transcendental and given but a matter of human social choice through pragmatic processes; that belief system and material interest influence law making and the law that is made influences belief system and material interests. The article thus is a defense of undertaking an objective, positivist analysis of law and government as they exist in actual political economies (legal-economic nexuses).

Warren J. SamuelsEmail: Email: