Abstract

ABSTRACTLawyers tend to fall into two categories. Some argue that the law should reflect our moral duties to each other. Seen that way, law is a form of applied ethics, and the social sciences should play only a very limited role in the reasoning of legal scholars. Others argue that the law should be developed consistently with the conclusions of social science, arguing, for example, that the task of the law is to maximize economic efficiency, such that law must conform to economists’ conclusions about which rules are the most efficient. Jonathan Morgan rejects both of those approaches. He does not think that the law should mimic our moral duties, but he is also skeptical about the utility of social sciences in predicting the effects of law. He also argues that courts are not institutionally competent to deal with social-science evidence. However, he does not conclude that the social sciences must be rejected by legal scholarship. He himself uses them to establish that law is generally not needed to govern ongoing commercial relationships, that it is required only when such relationships break down, and that courts should focus on resolving such breakdowns as simply and predictably as possible. Based on those considerations, he sketches a minimalist vision of contract law and argues that it is the best we can hope for.