Robert Lee Hale and the Role of Coercion in Markets
Robert Lee Hale was an important lawyer and economist who worked at Columbia University from the 1920's through the 1960's. He is an important figure for thinking about institutional law and economics and we will explore more of him in this blog over time. One of Hale's most important articles is: Hale, Robert L. "Coercion and distribution in a supposedly non-coercive state." Political Science Quarterly 38.3 (1923): 470-494. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2142367.pdf Warren Samuels wrote a very long and well thought out article on Hale in the Miami Law Review entitled “The Economy as a system of power and its legal base” by Warren Samuels which can be found here: https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2750&context=umlr This may be more useful for economic scholars rather than legal scholars, but economics is based on the idea of voluntary exchange and economists have gone out of their way to avoid questions of power, coercion an