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Charles K. Rowley's thin chapter is titled “An Intellectual History of Law and Economics: 1739–2003.” I say thin in the sense that, by my calculation, for the dates it purports to describe, it covers about one decade of history per page. Perhaps “accelerated” might better capture its essence. Overall it is an adequate outline of the history of Chicago law and economics (with some notable exceptions). To his credit (unlike most of the other chapters in this book), perhaps because, as its co-editor and probably responsible for the title of the book, he (like Posner) does actually include a nice discussion of those who were part of the “origins of law and economics.” The chapter does have two major flaws. First, for some odd reason, he chooses to challenge the well-accepted moniker—legal realist movement—and invokes the “legal realist mood” and then tries (awkwardly) to maintain the “mood-spin” within his descriptive analysis—it just sounds silly. One wonders, who (other than he) even thinks to raise the question as whether the legal realists were a “movement” or a “mood.” Surely not Edmund Kitch, one of the mainstays of Chicago law and economics and a contributor to his volume. Kitch does not buy into Rowley's spin; like all other scholars who write on legal realism (both in and out of the field of law and economics), in the forward to his chapter, Kitch follows the legal scholarship and uses the widely accepted—legal realist “movement” (p. 54).

A multidimensional understanding of human nature based on biology can provide a very useful framework of analysis and bring some understanding and coherence to the very fragmented perspectives within moral, political, and legal philosophy. A useful four-part framework of analysis can be based on the evolution of the brain as described by Paul MacLean (1973, 1990) and Sir John Eccles (1989). A similar pattern of development of our mental and moral capacities through experience in childhood was also described by Jean Piaget (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). This multidimensional understanding of human nature considers the individual, social, rational, and metaphysical perspectives. Because this four-part multidimensional understanding of human nature is based on a naturalized epistemology related to the development of our mental capacities in both evolution and through experience, this pattern can be seen across a wide variety of disciplines. Medical ethics, US constitutional democracy, and legal philosophy will be used as examples of the usefulness of this multidimensional understanding of human nature.

The first contribution to this section is by Richard Schmalensee titled “Thoughts on the Chicago school legacy in U.S. antitrust.” It appears the purpose of this essay is to set up a target for the rest of the contributors to shoot at – a target that is emphatically pro-Chicago. In his essay, Schmalensee reviews some of the aspects of U.S. antitrust policy that outraged Chicago school lawyers and economists in the 1970s. He takes a brief look at some of Chicago's subsequent victories that he claims are now generally accepted as positive changes. And finally, he argues that some of Chicago's lost battles also constitute positive aspects of its legacy. His discussion is focused on four broad issues: the objectives of antitrust, the past policy toward “no-fault” concentration, the treatment of productive efficiency, and the evaluation of non-standard business conduct (pp. 11–12).

This project of derivation that I have just described may seem strange, but is not. In this as in many respects Plato set the fashion for the millennia to come. The ideal state sketched in the Republic is not only an analogy to the soul (though it is that too); it is an implication of Plato's conception of human mental capacity, a conception that is ontological as well as epistemological. It was Plato who, according to Aristotle, first separated a universal (i.e., a concept) from particulars (i.e., a concept's physical embodiments or expressions). There are a multitude of chairs, very different in size, shape, color, and design, yet there is also a concept of the “chair,” in which all the physical chairs participate. The concept has no physical body and therefore in a sense exists outside time and space – it is immaterial and eternal. But Plato believed, reasonably as it seems to me, that it is real. It is real in the same way that a line or circle in Euclidean geometry is real even though it is not identical to any physical line or circle and cannot be – the Euclidean line has only one dimension, and the Euclidean circle only two, and there are no one-or two-dimensional objects in the physical world (although electrons are dimensionless), as far as we know.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Research in the discipline of antitrust economics, which encompasses legal as well as economic aspects, reveals a young and expanding area that has established its own literature within the past twenty years. The citations in this bibliographic essay were selected for their particular relevance to the subject and represent a core collection of materials that would be most useful to the study of American antitrust economics.

Current antitrust doctrine seemingly accepts average variable cost as one possible boundary between competitive and predatory pricing. Certain authors contend, however, that equally efficient rivals can sometimes be excluded from a market even when a dominant firm prices above its own average variable cost. A model is developed to test for predatory conduct in one such case. This model is applied to the reconstituted lemon juice industry. It shows that under certain conditions, even prices above average variable cost can be exclusionary.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) creates rights for covered employees, defines conduct that violates those rights, and deems that conduct an unfair labor practice. But while given broad remedial powers under the Act, the Board's options were curtailed by the Supreme Court's limit on the use of deterrence as an express remedial justification. The Board was left with a strongly make-whole, i.e., ex-post, focus to undo the consequences of a violation.

Put differently, the current NLRA remedies reflect a pay-or-play philosophy. The goal is restoration after the fact, using ex-post remedies to give parties the benefit or status quo that they expected. An actor willing to pay may use a cost–benefit analysis and strategically choose to violate the Act, accepting the make-whole remedies later. But the Act created ex-ante statutory rights, not agreed-upon contractual terms. By statutory enactment, employees are given something of value deemed worthy of protection. Assigning value to compliance with the law in the first instance not only prevents sometimes irreparable harm but also reaffirms the inherent value of the right itself.

The impact of the Board's limited remedies is therefore a broad value-driven one. Without ex-ante deterrence, the available ex-post make-whole remedial options make a normative statement about individuals' rights under the Act: those rights may not be inherently worth enough to incentivize legal compliance. The make-whole focus can imply that financial compensation for the portion of harm that can be calculated and “undoing” some nonfinancial effects is sufficient. There is little drive to deter infringement before the fact. By examining the remedial philosophy behind contrasting approaches in the common law of torts and contract, this Article asserts that the current remedial strictures and framework undermine both the Act and the worth of its rights in the eyes of the public and the employees who hold them.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.