Law & Economics Methodology and Epistemology

This is a presentation of Law & Economics (L&E) tradition within a civil law context legal epistemology. Starting from a review of the modern legal paradigms in Brazil, L&E is historically and epistemologically contextualized. The main objective of the paper is to offer a first approach for lawyers and economists to comprehend L&E’s approach by stressing its usefulness and limitations. Once L&E is contextualized within the law, some economics methodological tools, hence L&E’s, are presented and analyzed in terms of compatibility with modern legal paradigms. The result is a first approach to L&E in a civil law system and a demonstration on how it fits within modern legal framework