Postdoc for the ‘Fiat Lex: The Evolution of Lawmaking’ project

V Čechách kombinace zřejmě nevídaná: zájemce o law and economics, precedenční právo a právo starého Říma (alespoň o tom posledním nám na fakultě řekli...):

Postdoc for the 'Fiat Lex: The Evolution of Lawmaking' project na Universitě v Amsterdamu

Why did some countries develop common law while others adopted a civil law system? Is judge-made law more adaptive to the needs of the economy than legislation is? Such questions have appealed not only to lawyers but also to philosophers (from Aristotle to Bentham and Hart), sociologists (such as Weber) and economists (starting from Hayek). Three decades ago, proponents of the 'efficiency of the common law' hypothesis postulated that judge-made law is more efficient than legislation because inefficient rules are litigated out of the system. More recent law and finance literature has emphasized that the common law fosters financial development. Legal origins literature has linked the origins of these different systems to the balance of political power between central and local authorities. According to these views, politics determines the law-making system, which in turn determines economic performance.

However, arguments and evidence to the contrary have emerged and definitive answers are still lacking. The proposed research will apply a novel approach to these problems by focusing on ancient Rome. Rome provides an ideal case-study to draw lessons for the present, because it initially relied on legislation, then adopted judge-made law and finally reverted to legislation. By studying the rise and fall of judge-made law in Rome during roughly ten centuries of unbroken legal development from the XII Tables to the Corpus Juris, this project aims to advance our understanding of what determined the evolution from legislation to judge-made and back again, and what effects this had on the Roman legal system. The analysis will focus on 1) the accountability of the law-making institutions and 2) the adaptability of the legal system to the needs of the economy (enforcement of contract and protection of property).

Informace o dalších požadavcích na kandidáty naleznete na výše uvedeném linku.