Richard A. Posner's Economic Analysis Of Law And Legal Pragmatism

As the founder of "the economic analysis of law" and the advocate oflegal pragmatism, Posner conducted two distinct kinds of defenses for hiseconomic analysis of law: One is the foundational defense; one is thepragmaticdefense.Thischangeinthedirectionofdefensetriggeraseries ofissues: Did his early defense fail? If it did, what was the reason of thisfailure? Did his later defense succeed? In other words, can his legalpragmatism givestrongsupport tohis economicanalysis oflaw? Ifnot,is ita proof of confrontation and conflict of his economic analysis of law andlegal pragmatism? If so, is it a proof of harmonization and unification ofthem?The answers to these questions have important significance in thelegitimacy and sustainability of Posner's economic analysis of law, in theconnotation and extension of the definition of legal pragmatism and in theconsistency and compatibility of Posner's whole theory. It is not onlyrelated to Posner's economic analysis of law and his legal pragmatism, butalso related to the formation and development of Posner's whole theory.Moreover,becauseofPosner'sirreplaceablyimportantstatusinthesefields,it is even related to the whole field of economic analysis of law and legalpragmatism.However, the academe seems to have no recognition of the importanceof these issues, that most scholars'research on Posner (including domesticand foreign)stillbasicallystaysinakindofsingle-anglemode,thatistosay,they either study Posner's economic analysis of law solely, or only discusshis legal pragmatism, ignoring the relationship between the two. Therefore,I wrote this paper in hope of making some valuable contributions to thisfacultyareaofresearch.