Publication Title
Law Library Journal
Volume
118
Page
100
Year
2026
Abstract
From roughly 1970 to 2010, law and economics rose from the margins to a dominant position in American legal academia, accompanied by a dramatic increase in citations to law and economics scholarship. Citation analysis is often treated as a proxy for intellectual merit, but that assumption becomes questionable when ideas are advanced through systematic, well-funded, and sustained promotion aimed at serving specific political and economic interests. This study examines the right-wing funding networks that supported the rise of law and economics and analyzes the resulting bibliometric patterns in legal scholarship. By tracing these financial and citation dynamics, the study argues that the ascendancy of law and economics was neither inevitable nor grounded solely in intellectual quality. Instead, it reflects a deliberate strategy to cultivate academic legitimacy for a purportedly neutral but politically targeted, pro-corporate, anti-regulatory legal doctrine—one that has played a significant role in shaping American law, legal education, and public policy over the past half-century.
Recommended Citation
Scott H. Dewey, Follow the Money: A Historical and Bibliometric Reflection on the Rise of Law and Economics, 1970-2025, 118 Law Libr. J. 100 (2026), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/1201.
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
