Law by Human Intent or Evolution? Some Remarks on the Austrian School of Economics’ Role in the Development of Law and Economics

In the late nineteenth century, economic analysis of law experienced an outright rejection by the German-speaking legal community. In the second half of the twentieth century, it became a dominant approach in American legal inquiry. We argue that this success was partly due to the insights of Austrian economics which the second wave of law and economics has incorporated. We argue that Austrian legal and economic scholars marked the two cornerstones between which the subsequent discussion oscillated: social planning versus evolution (spontaneous order)