Joint MA/JD in Economics

Wayne State's Joint Master of Arts in Economics and Juris Doctor program prepares graduates to address the steadily increasing influence of economic analysis on the law through its effect on legal scholarship and 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.

Why study economics and law?

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.

Joint MA/JD in Economics program requirements and curriculum

The Joint Master of Arts and Juris Doctor program requires completion of 32 credits by satisfying the university graduate education requirements and the following:

• Economics 6000
• Any one of Economics 6100, 6120, or 7100 to meet a requirement of proficiency in statistics
• Two 7000-level economics courses in one field (i.e., two consecutive graduate economics courses in any of the following: health economics, industrial organization, international economics, labor economics)
• Either Economics 5250: Economic Analysis of Law or the Lex 8246: Law and Economics Seminar

The foregoing requirements provide a total of 19 or 20 credits. The remaining 12 or 13 credits, required to reach the total of 32, may be completed either from (a) economics courses: those at the 5000-level or above (excluding 5000, 5050 and 5100), including Economics 5250; or from (b) law school courses: Lex 8246: Law and Economics Seminar, if not taken previously, the Lex 7026: Antitrust or Lex 801: Seminar or Lew 7408: International Law. The maximum number of law school credits allowed toward the degree would be 12.

Students in this program must be admitted to both the Law School and the Department of Economics and complete all requirements for the M.A. in Economics and all requirements for the J.D. degree. After admission to the Law School, the student must complete the first year of the J.D. program before electing additional economics courses.

Examination requirement

Students must pass the microeconomics M.A. exam and one economics field exam passed at the M.A. level.

Credits

A student will not obtain credit toward the MA/JD. for any economics course in which he or she receives less than a B; there is no credit for a B-. It should also be noted that a maximum of 12 credits in the Law School is allowed as credit toward the joint degree.

To enter the program, an applicant must have completed the courses required for the first year of law school at WSU (and to be awarded the degree must subsequently complete law school).

Tuition

With respect to tuition, each student is charged for each course at the rate generally applicable to the program for the school in which the course is offered, i.e., law school courses at the default law school rate, economics courses at the normal rate for graduate students in the College of Liberal Arts.

There are two coordinators for the J.D./M.A. program, one in the Law School (the assistant dean of students) and the other in the economics department. The functions of each coordinator are to explain the program to prospective students and advise students in the program about the choice of courses.