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97 Yale L.J. 1233 (1987-1988)
The Structure of Tort Law

handle is hein.journals/ylr97 and id is 1251 raw text is: Book Review The Structure of Tort Law The Economic Structure of Tort Law. By William Landes* and Richard A. Posner.** Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp.ix, 329. $27.50 Economic Analysis of Accident Law. By Steven Shavell.*** Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1987. Pp. xii, 312. $30.00 Jules L. Colemant The economic analysis of tort law, like the economic analysis of law generally, has both positive and normative dimensions.' Positive economic analysis seeks to explain tort law by rationally reconstructing it: in other words, by demonstrating how and to what extent existing doctrines fur- ther economic efficiency. Normative economic analysis can be understood as making either of two claims. In its modest version, normative economic analysis makes a conditional claim: if the (or a) desirable goal of tort law is to promote economic efficiency, then the rules of liability ought to be such and such. In its ambitious version, normative economic analysis drops the conditional, turning the hypothetical into a categorical impera- tive: The rules of liability ought to be such and such. All forms of the economic analysis of torts require specifying a model from which one can derive the efficiency of various kinds of liability rules * Clifton R. Musser Professor of Economics, University of Chicago. ** United States Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. *** Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School. t Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Ph.D. Rockefeller University 1972, M.S.L. Yale Law School, 1976. I would like to thank Roberta Romano, Alan Schwartz, and David Bernstein for their helpful suggestions. 1. For an example of the positive dimension of tort law, see Posner, A Theory of Negligence, 1 J. LEGAL STUD. 29 (1972). For the normative, see generally G. CALABRESI, THE COSTS OF ACCI- DENTS: A LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS (1970). 1233

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