Michael Trebilcock and the past and future of law and economics

In the revised text of his keynote address delivered at the Symposium in Honour of Michael Trebilcock held at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 1-2 October 2009, Professor Priest traces the history of the law and economics movement, starting with Aaron Director and Ronald Coase, founders of the Journal of Law & Economics ('Stage I'); proceeding to Richard Posner, Guido Calabresi, and the emergence of the efficiency theory of the common law ('Stage II'), and concluding with Michael Trebilcock, whose scholarship characterizes what Priest argues is the emerging third stage. The distinguishing feature of Trebilcock's scholarship is that he does not relentlessly promote market, as opposed to government, solutions to economic problems, although, in common with his intellectual predecessors, he does seek to determine the actual effects of legal policy on behaviour and views legal rules and institutions as means of shaping behaviour to achieve desirable social outcomes.