Rational Choice
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction Normative legal theory is concerned with the ends and justifications for the law as a whole and for particular legal rules. Previous entries in the Lexicon have examined exemplars of the three great traditions in normative theory–consequentialist, deontological, and aretaic (or virtue-centered) perspectives. There are important differences between these three…
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction The phrase “path dependency” is used to express the idea that history matters–choices made in the past can affect the feasibility (possibility or cost) of choices made in the future. This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon introduces this idea to law students, especially first-year law students, with an interest…
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction One of the most useful tools in analyzing legal rules and the policy problems to which they apply is game theory. The basic idea of game theory is simple. Many human interactions can be modeled as games. To use game theory, we build a simple model of a real world situations…