The Chicago School As A Virus?
Danny Sokol points to Spencer Webber Waller’s “The Chicago School Virus.” Given the paper’s title, the fact that I’ve written previously on the irresponsible or misleading usages of the term Chicago School, and the author’s predilection to take shots at the Chicago School more generally (previous attempts include describing Hovenkamp’s recent movement toward Chicago School views as imposing the “thinking man’s death sentence” on the U.S. antitrust system), I was pleasantly surprised by the paper. The paper is really about why the Chicago School succeeded in some substantive fields of law and not others. It is quite careful to avoid cheap mischaracterizations of the intellectual content of the Chicago School, and much more importantly, Waller offer some interesting insights about why certain intellectual movements succeed and fail in different areas of law.
