ZWeR 2026, 139
Law’s Ruleness
More than other fields of law, competition law struggles to align itself with its economic purpose while keeping legal requirements workable for market participants, competition authorities, and courts. This essay in memory of Heike Schweitzer approaches the question from a broader perspective on the relationship between economics and law. It argues that economic reasoning itself counsels ruleness: simple rules that deliberately abstain from pursuing efficiency directly.
Contents
- I. Introduction: law as applied economics?
- II. Ruleness
- 1. Ruleness as limited optimization
- 2. Two examples
- 3. Granularity as information selection
- III. Cost rationales for ruleness
- 1. Decision-making costs
- 2. Disagreement costs
- 2.1 Disagreement as impediment to self-enforcing law
- 2.2 Private information as root cause of disagreement
- 2.3 Failure of legal allocation to elicit information
- 2.4 Ruleness as disagreement mitigation
- IV. Ruleness strategies
- 1. Liability law: optimizing legal allocation
- 2. Property law and contract: sidestepping legal allocation
- V. Conclusion
- *
- *)Professor of Civil Law, Business Law, and Law and Economics, Freie Universität Berlin
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