Richard Posner and Economic Analysis of Law

The paper deals with the biography and the landmarks in the intellectual activity of Richard A. Posner, an American legal theorist, one of the founders of a modern jurisprudence theory, i.e. economic analysis of law. In this article, which is an introduction to the translated article by Posner Creating a Legal Framework for Economic Development, the author of the article focuses on the contribution of the legal theorist to the modern discussions on the balance between economics and law and the explanation of human behavior. The author of the article stresses that Posner's achievement is the application of the economic theory to understand the behavior of the subjects of law and to regulate the activity of various public institutions including those of antimonopoly policy, utilities and telecommunication market, as well as the issues of civil law responsibility, contract and procedural law. R. Posner has developed and justified the theory that common law may be best interpreted via the intention of judges to maximize the economic efficiency to resolve legal cases and extrapolated the economic analysis of law to new for such an analysis aspects, i.e. family relations, race discrimination, privacy, judicial practice. As to the economic analysis of law, Posner specifies two major causes. First, people even taking non-market decisions e.g. selecting a driving speed show rationale and maximize benefit from a certain decision considering the costs related to this choice. Secondly, norms of law set prices on a certain decision. Thus, changes of prices influence the quantity of activity which a person is ready to perform. The author is confident that studying Posner's ideas is a relevant task for Russian jurisprudence.