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ISSUESRELATED STORIESWashington Post Judges' Free Trips Go UnreportedFederal judges took more than a dozen expense-paid trips to seminars put on by conservative groups but failed to disclose the resort trips on their annual financial reports, as required by federal ethics laws.
Antitrust Law and Economics Review JUDICIAL SEMINARS: ECONOMICS, ACADEMIA, AND CORPORATE MONEY IN AMERICA(good description of the ethical problems for judges in re the Law and Economics movement)
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ISSUE: Law and Economics MovementLaw and Economics MovementLaw and Economics is a movement-within-the-movement funded and led by the conservative philanthropies described in this report. [ From The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, NCRP, July, 1997] Law and Economics fundingMuch of the grant money going to top academic institutions supported the establishment or expansion of law and economics programs, which conservative foundations, particularly Olin and Scaife, began to support heavily in the 1980s. Out of the $23 million awarded (over the three years of the NCRP report) to develop or expand specific academic programs, $16.5 million supported law and economics programs and law schools, with major awards to the University of Chicago ($3.3 million), Harvard University ($3.2 million), the University of Virginia ($2.3 million), Yale University ($2 million), George Mason University ($1.4 million), Cornell University ($1.2 million) and Stanford University ($711,578). Such support prompted the release of a 1993 report by the Alliance for Justice that examined conservative foundations' efforts to reshape legal theory and practice in ways more congenial to commercial or corporate interests .7 According to the report, conservative funders helped to institutionalize the "Chicago school" version of law and economics. In effect, their funding did much to create a law and economics "movement" which, because of its anti-regulatory orientation, was favorably perceived by conservative donors as potentially leading to a more predictable legal environment for business. Referring to Chicago school theorists (including Richard Posner and Henry Manne), the Alliance for Justice report states that: They [ Law and Economics proponents ] assert that the law's fundamental goal should be to maximize the wealth of society by promoting the efficient use of scarce resources. Chicago Schoolers bring to law and economics theory a marked disdain for governmental regulation, arguing that such intervention interferes with the natural tendency of resources to gravitate toward their most valuable uses in the market. They believe the law should mimic the market by seeking only 'efficient' legal outcomes, those whose economic benefits outweigh their economic costs. Thus conceived, the law is not an exponent and promoter of constitutional or ethical tenets; rather, it is a mere supplement to the market: a necessary but minor vehicle for perfecting [ so-called ] market-like solutions.'"8 Others working within the law and economics tradition take the position that the field is neither intrinsically "liberal" nor "conservative," arguing instead that it offers a useful and important tool (economic analysis) with which to consider a variety of legal problems.9 Still, law and economics scholars working within a more progressive framework acknowledge that efficiency, rather than equity, remains the field's core concern. Moreover, given that the real world application of law and economics principles will depend on the matrix and ideological orientation of existing institutions, conservative foundations' efforts to create and expand law and economics programs must be evaluated against the totality of their grantmaking investments, particularly in the legal arena. Those investments have included $16.5 million (1992-1994) in law-related funding within the academic sector, primarily to support law and economics curricula as well as an additional $10.5 million to support pro-market public interest law firms, pro-bono legal networks, training seminars for federal judges, and law student and alumni organizations dedicated to advancing conservative philosophical and legal principles within law schools, the judiciary and policymaking circles. Thus, $27 million was directly devoted to legal institutions and training programs. This $27 million does not, however, reflect the general operating or program-specific support provided by conservative foundations to national think tanks engaged in judicial reform efforts. A prime example is the Manhattan Institute, which initiated a very active Judicial Studies Program to influence national legal debates, particularly over civil law and tort reform. 7. Alliance for Justice, Justice for Sale: Shortchanging the Public Interest for Private Gain (Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Justice, 1993). 8. Ibid., p. 24. 9. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Rethinking the Progressive Agenda: The Reform of the American Regulatory State (New York: Free Press, 1992)
Jedediah Purdy The Chicago Acid BathThe Impoverished Logic of "Law and Economics"Read about the cruel, market-serving, people-denying legal theory called “Law and Economics,” funded by the conservative philanthropies, that is helping to transform American law by elevating the idea of “wealth-maximization” to the goal of the law.
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RELATED STORIESTripsForJudges.orgDocuments the "education" of federal and state judges with an interactive, searchable database of judge's trips.
Grants for "Law and Economics"
Search the database for grants that have the word "judge" in themEfforts by the right to "educate" state & federal judges
Eric M. Weiss Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and George Mason University's Law & Economics Center lied about corporate sponsorshipFree trips for judges paid for by tobacco, oil and other corporate interests Two organizations that have provided free trips to hundreds of federal judges received large contributions from tobacco, oil and other corporate interests, according to documents released yesterday.
Abner Mikva The Wooing of Our JudgesAbner Mikva decries the "Educating" of federal judges at posh resorts by conservative foundations: "...judges listened to speakers whose overwhelming message was that regulation should be limited -- that the free market should be relied upon to protect the environment, for example, or that the "takings" clause of the Constitution should be interpreted to prohibit rules against development in environmentally sensitive places."
Washington Post Report Links Environmental Rulings, Judges' Free TripsFederal judges who attended expenses-paid seminars that favor "free market" solutions to environmental problems struck down protections in some of the decade's significant environmental cases, according to a study of the increasingly popular judicial trips.
Salon.com Tipping the antitrust scalesHow the right helped make the federal courts safe for Microsoft (contextualizes the Law and Economics funding -- compares judges who go to opulent "seminars" with their court rulings-- ed.)
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