This work analyzes the centrality of law in nineteenth-century historical and institutional economics and is a prehistory to the new institutional economics of the late twentieth century. In the 1830s the 'new science of law' aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodologically individualist terms of economic discourse, stressing determinism and evolutionism. Practitioners stood readier than contemporary institutionalists to admit the possibilities of altruistic values, bounded rationality, and institutional inertia into their research program. Professor Pearson shows that the positive analysis of law tended to push normative discussions up from the level of specific laws to that of society's political organization. The analysis suggests that the professionalization of the social sciences - and the new science's own imprecision - condemned the program to oblivion around 1930. Nonetheless, institutional economics is currently developing greater resemblances to the now-forgotten new science.

"...the book's primary appeal will be to historians of thought, who will appreciate Pearson's synthesis of what appears to be a wide range of literature. The book will appeal to a wider audience, however." Thomas J. Miceli, Constitutional Political Economy

"Heath Person has written a concise book designed both to serve as a `pre-history to the `new institutional economics' of the late-twentieth century' and to highlight the centrality of law in nineteenth-century `historical' economics (vii). Origins of Law and Economics provides a first-class pedigree that will be of use to practitioners of the new institutional economics who want to broaden and enrich contemporary debate. This is a carefully structured, well-researched book that will find a role in contemporary debate. Because that is its author's it has fulfilled the purpose for which it was designed." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences