Joint MA/JD in Economics

The Master of Arts in Economics and Juris Doctor joint program prepares graduates to address the steadily increasing influence of economic analysis on the law through its effect on legal scholarship and on judicial decisions.

A course in law and economics is now part of the standard curriculum of the leading law schools. A majority of the federal judiciary has now had a short formal course in law and economics provided at one of these research centers. Almost any recent issue of a major law journal will include several articles employing economic analysis, often including diagrams and a formal mathematical model. The use of econometric analysis is now routine in the top twenty law journals.

There's a large and rapidly growing demand for economic analysis by lawyers and law firms, many of whom now have cases pending before judges known to apply economic analysis to law Judges Guido Calabresi and Ralph Winter of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit, Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit, Douglas Ginsburg and Stephen Williams of the D.C. Circuit, the Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, and many others.

In some areas of practice like antitrust, public utility regulation or consumer product safety regulation, a lawyer unfamiliar with economic principles cannot be considered competent. In 1991, the American Law and Economics Association was founded to coordinate research efforts in the economic analysis of law. The membership of this association includes academic and practicing lawyers and economists. Since 1999, the Association has published the American Law and Economics Review, a refereed journal.

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For more information, please contact the director of graduate studies.

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