What is Economic Law?

Abstract

The paper revisits and elaborates on the improbable concept of “economic law” which originated in early twentieth-century debates in search of an legal political framework for a capitalist economy under democratic control. In analyzing its composite elements – “law” and “economic” – it becomes obvious how the connection of the two has always been the question rather than the answer. By placing the deconstruction of economic law in the context of state transformation and globalization, on the one hand, and mainstream legal theory with its tendency to “name” a legal field rather than to explore what this name can explain, on the other, economic law emerges as a critical tool and methodology. As such, it offers its services to the current renewal of “law & political economy” as it, too, seeks to uncover and render visible how law is implicated in the creation and perpetuation of social inequality and violence.