Abstract
Law & economics is probably one of the most controversial subdisciplines of economic science. This paper summarizes the discussion on the scientific status of law & economics and shows that the major forms of critique could have been formulated at the address of economics in general. The criticism stems in large part from the dominant Popperian view on science which makes it highly problematic to stick to imperfect and thus falsified theories, based on unrealistic assumptions and evidenced by introspective arguments. Legal economists have tried to defend their approach by referring to Friedman's instrumentalism or the relativist theories of Kuhn and Lakatos, but these turn out to have major shortcomings. It is argued that probability or plausibility theories are better equipped to distinguish good from bad theories and to justify the use of unrealistic assumptions, introspective arguments and ‘speculative’ Kaldor-Hicks balance weighing.
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