Criminal law has been the subject of the most extensive empirical work in law and economics, probably because of the availability of data (see Crime). Economic theory predicts that criminals, like others, respond to incentives, and it is clear that increasing the likelihood and severity of sentences in a jurisdiction leads to a reduction in crime in that jurisdiction. The issue of the deterrent effect of the death penalty has been more controversial, but several recent articles using advanced econometric techniques and comprehensive data have found a significant deterrent effect. Each execution deters between eight and twenty-eight murders, eighteen being the best estimate. No peer-reviewed empirical criticism of this work has been published. Studies on procedural rules have shown that more rights for accused can lead to an increase in crime. A controversial paper by John Donohue and Steven Levitt empirically argues that the easing of abortion restrictions has led to a drop in crime because unwanted children are more likely to become criminals. There is also significant debate in the literature about the impact of laws facilitating the carrying of hidden weapons on crimes. Some, like John Lott, see a significant drop in crime as a result of these laws, while others see a much smaller impact, although there is little evidence of an increase in crime. I have argued for understanding some of our laws as conditions. There seemed to be an easy way to conditionally interpret the ideal law of gas, Ohm`s law, Yoda`s power law, Gresham`s law, Buys-Ballot`s law, and Faraday`s first electrolysis law (among other laws). The argument was based on the understanding that the behavior described by the functional relation or equation by which these laws are typically represented is not behavior attributed to everything in a relatively free domain, but rather to a particular class of systems (ideal gases, electrical conductors, etc.) to which behavior is conditioned in advance.
This type of reasoning works for individual cases. However, apart from inductive motivation, there is no reason to believe that every law must include such conditioning. 5 When I argue that we should schematize laws in the form of (1), I do not deny that there are various logical forms that are equivalent to them, such as those obtained by associating a law with a logical truth. The following discussion aims to make visible a natural way of rendering laws that reveals the particular type of conclusion they allow, namely. from a type of system to a type of behavior of that system. Even if demand decreases due to rising prices, it is not possible to predict exactly how much demand will decrease. Thus, economic laws “do not necessarily apply in all individual cases; they may not be reliable in the ever-changing environment of the real economy; And, of course, they are by no means untouchable. For example, the law of demand states that other things that remain the same, a fall in prices leads to an expansion of demand, and vice versa. Again, some economic laws are positive, such as scientific laws such as the law of diminishing returns, which deal with inanimate nature. One wing representing a non-neoclassical approach to “law and economics” is the continental (mainly German) tradition, which sees the concept starting from the approach of political science and the German historical school of economics; this view is expressed in the Elgar Companion to Law and Economics (2. 2005) and – but not exclusively – in the European Journal of Law and Economics. Here, non-neoclassical economic approaches are deliberately used to analyze legal (and administrative/governance issues).
Let us now turn to the laws which, at least superficially, do not seem to be conditions or equations. The first thing to note is that the examples given for this “different” group of laws claim the existence of a relationship between the variables. Gresham`s law relates the variable of the quality of money to time; Buys Ballot`s law refers to the height and direction of pressure with position in the hemisphere and wind direction; Faraday`s first law of electrolysis relates the released mass of an element to a quantity of electricity. Although they are not equations as such, they are nevertheless similar in that they describe certain functional relationships. Because of accuracy and certainty, the laws of physical science can predict the course of events. But the laws of economics do not have this predictive value. The laws of economics are conditioned and are associated with a set of qualifications and assumptions, and these assumptions and qualifications are usually contained in the phrase “other things that remain the same” or ceteris paribus attached to each law and theory of economics. The argument presented in the previous section therefore seems to extend to any law presented as a functional relationship. First, we find that the relationship includes a preaching of something, and then we find that the preaching must be qualified by a system predicate if it is to be generally attributed. As expected, the law turns out to be a more complete condition.
