A new paper by Elliot Ash (ETH Zurich), Daniel L Chen (Toulouse School of Economics), and Suresh Naidu (Columbia University) in the Quarterly Journal of Economics discusses the impact of the Manne Economics Institute for Federal Judges on judicial rulings (“Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice“). From their abstract:
We find that after attending economics training, participating judges use more economics language in their opinions, rule against regulatory agencies more often, and impose more severe criminal sentences. We argue that economics, as a rigorous social science, was especially effective in persuading judges.
The Manne Economics Institute for Federal Judges is a long-running program started by Henry Manne in 1976 to introduce judges to economic reasoning. It continues to this day, the modern incarnation run by the Law & Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School.[1] An important thing to note is that the lectures given and the participants selection were non-partisan. Both Republican- and Democratic-nominated judges participated, being chosen on a first-come, first-served basis. Further, lectures were given by prominent economists like Milton Freidman, Paul Samuelson, Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Orley Ashenfelter, and Martin Feldstein. Imagine learning economics from that line-up! Two Nobel Prize winners (Samuelson, Freidman), three who should have won Nobel Prizes (Alchian, Demsetz, Feldstein), and one who could still win a Nobel Prize (Ashenfelter).
Manne’s efforts to break down the silos between disciplines stands as a testament to the importance of disciplinary engagement. The judges used their new insights in their rulings, which in turn have continued to influence modern opinions. Further, the classes helped make economic arguments more intelligible to the judges. As the late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, the classes “lift[ed] the veil on such mysteries as regression analyses” (see page 7 of the linked paper). When expert testimony is obscure and technical, it has little influence on judges. Rather, the de-siloing turned such wizardly experts into teachers for the judges[2], allowing them to improve the quality of their rulings and make them less reliant on non-judicial factors.
The specialization of knowledge (a natural consequence of the division of labor) is a great thing. Just like the division of labor, the specialization of knowledge deepens our knowledge base, leading to more and more gains. But one must be aware of the interconnectedness of knowledge. Insights can be gained from all sorts of disciplines, even those seemingly unrelated. This empirical test of the Manne program supports the need for breaking down silos and rejecting the “just stay in your lane!” mindset.
Update: In an earlier version, I had Feldstein in my list of folks who could still win a Nobel Prize. As David Henderson pointed out in the comments, Feldstein is dead, which means he cannot win the Prize now. I have updated the post to reflect that fact.
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[1] Full disclosure: the LEC also runs a parallel program called The Law Institute for Economics Professors. I was a participant in that program this past June.
[2] This metaphor comes from Roger Koppl and E. James Cowan’s 2010 paper “A Battle of Forensic Experts is not a Race to the Bottom.” (Review of Political Economy 22(2): 235-262
READER COMMENTS
David Henderson
Sep 26 2025 at 11:13am
Feldstein can’t win. To win it, you have to be alive.
Jon Murphy
Sep 26 2025 at 12:18pm
I thought he still was. I’ll fix.
Monte
Sep 27 2025 at 11:57am
The committee should abolish the rule prohibiting a posthumous award. Feldstein deserves it, dead or alive.
Richard Posner is a superlative example and (as of the most recent studies) remains the most-cited U.S. legal scholar of all time.
steve
Sep 26 2025 at 2:19pm
I think this is a great idea, but it does bring up a pet peeve. We already have special courts for tax issues and now some judges are getting some econ training so what about medicine? For sure sometimes you dont need any training when the issue is obvious, but there are times when the medical issues are complex enough that a judge, trained as a lawyer where the most common undergrad degree is poltical science, who likely took somewhere between zero and two science courses and maybe a math course, is going to rule on what evidence is admissible. Besides no basic science they haven’t studied any area of medicine and if we are lucky maybe they took a stats course once.
I would note that some countries, UK and France just to name a couple, require training and/or testing before they are allowed to hear cases.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Sep 26 2025 at 2:42pm
Interestingly enough, that is a problem I am working on as we speak with a group of lawyers and other economists. We’re focusing primarily on forensic evidence, but the goal is the same: how to improve judicial decision-making.
Mactoul
Sep 26 2025 at 11:17pm
When a case, whether a law is constitutional or not, is decided 5-4 in Supreme Court, with one judge accusing the conservative minority of being motivated entirely by irrational animus, it would seem that the judges could do with greater grounding in the Constitution itself.
Question is whether greater employment of economic, hence, utilitarian and consequence-based reasoning, might be detrimental to law-based reasoning.
Jon Murphy
Sep 27 2025 at 6:51am
I’ve noticed you do this a lot: a little two-step where you describe one thing and then switch into a totally different thing by pretending they’re equal (In this case, you’re doing a three-step in treating economic thinking, utilitarian thinking, and consequence-based reasoning as the same things).