The Methodology of Law & Political Economy: Foundations, Applications, and Horizons
Time: 1pm to 2pm
Venue: Room 723, 7/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Abstract: Law and Political Economy (LPE) has quickly become one of the leading new methodological approaches in the contemporary legal academy. LPE is based on a wide range of social sciences and humanities, including sociology, political science, and history. LPE broadens the methodological lens beyond the narrow focus on economics that has dominated legal scholarship on commercial life in many jurisdictions. It demonstrates the critical importance of complementing economic analysis with interdisciplinary insights into questions of power (often via political science), race and social dynamics (via, inter alia, history and sociology), and values (via philosophy and ethics). All have a place in understanding and informing doctrine. This presentation will focus on the theoretical foundations of LPE, its application in three fields (competition, health, and data protection law), and the broader normative issues it raises and addresses.
About the speaker: Frank Pasquale is Professor of Law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. He is an expert on the law of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and machine learning. His books include The Black Box Society (Harvard University Press, 2015) and New Laws of Robotics (Harvard University Press, 2020). He has published more than 70 journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited The Oxford Handbook on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Transparent Data Mining for Big and Small Data (Springer-Verlag, 2017).