Origins of Law and Economics They may not be “Origins,” but they are “Contributions” (for the Most Part)Parisi and Rowley's

Charles K. Rowley's thin chapter is titled “An Intellectual History of Law and Economics: 1739–2003.” I say thin in the sense that, by my calculation, for the dates it purports to describe, it covers about one decade of history per page. Perhaps “accelerated” might better capture its essence. Overall it is an adequate outline of the history of Chicago law and economics (with some notable exceptions). To his credit (unlike most of the other chapters in this book), perhaps because, as its co-editor and probably responsible for the title of the book, he (like Posner) does actually include a nice discussion of those who were part of the “origins of law and economics.” The chapter does have two major flaws. First, for some odd reason, he chooses to challenge the well-accepted moniker—legal realist movement—and invokes the “legal realist mood” and then tries (awkwardly) to maintain the “mood-spin” within his descriptive analysis—it just sounds silly. One wonders, who (other than he) even thinks to raise the question as whether the legal realists were a “movement” or a “mood.” Surely not Edmund Kitch, one of the mainstays of Chicago law and economics and a contributor to his volume. Kitch does not buy into Rowley's spin; like all other scholars who write on legal realism (both in and out of the field of law and economics), in the forward to his chapter, Kitch follows the legal scholarship and uses the widely accepted—legal realist “movement” (p. 54).