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Article published In:
Journal of Argumentation in Context
Vol. 9:3 (2020) ► pp.368–398

Economic consequences for lawyers

Beyond the jurisprudential preface

| Universidade Nova de Lisboa
| Bocconi University
This article moves from the premise that a bilateral relationship between law and economics requires the contribution of the theory of legal argumentation. The article shows that, to be legally relevant, economic consequences have to be incorporated into interpretive arguments. In this regard, the jurisprudential preface strategy proposed by Craswell goes in the right direction, but begs the question of why the legally relevant consequences have to be assessed in terms of total welfare maximization instead of, in the EU context at least, consumer welfare maximization. After having identified five points of divergence between total and consumer welfare approaches, the article draws from legal inferentialism to propose an analytical tool – the explanatory scorekeeping model – for assessing the explanatory power of these two approaches. The model is then applied to the reasoning in United Brands Company v. Commission.
Keywords: consumer welfare, economic consequences, explanatory scorekeeping, jurisprudential preface, total welfare
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The foundations of the economic approach to law
  • 3.The analytical model of legal argumentation
  • 4.Lawyers need legally relevant economic consequences
  • 5.Which argument from economic consequences? Conceptual divergences between total and consumer welfare approaches
    • i.Who is harmed by anti-competitive behaviour?
    • ii.Do wealth transfers count? And if so, why?
    • iii.Is the deadweight-loss calculated? And if so, why?
    • iv.Is the elasticity of demand calculated? And if so, why?
    • v.Which sanctions? How are they calculated?
  • 6.Which argument from economic consequences? Methodological considerations
  • 7.Which argument from economic consequences? The example of United Brands
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.19013.esp
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