Law, economics and the commons – In the shadow of state-market paradigm

{THIS IN PERSON EVENT IS POSTPONED FOR THE FALL OF 2020 – AT THE PLANNED TIME WE WILL HOLD AN ONLINE CONFERENCE} In line with our previous workshop with Guido Calabresi this workshop will gather prominent legal and economic scholars that will engage in an interdisciplinary conversation on the limitations of the dominant paradigm in economic policy making. This time, our focus will be the commons. Although the commons has been recognized as a viable institutional arrangement, most notably in the Nobel prize awarded work of Elinor Ostrom, they still play a marginal role in economic policy making. Binary oppositions between command and exchange, state and market still dominate the way in which legal institutional tools are being used to govern economic processes. This is particularly problematic as the commons – that becomes marginalized as it does not fit in this opposition – offers a resilient mode of tackling the problem of environmental impact of economic processes. The workshop will involve a group of young and senior scholars that will discuss the origins and development of the existing paradigm from the early XX century until today. The focus will be on two specific issues in particular. First, participants will discuss legal assumptions behind the binary oppositions that marginalize commons both within private law and in the interaction between private and public law. Second, they will try to trace how these oppositions operated in the evolution of modern economic thought as well as correlative economic transformations from colonial times through post-socialist transitions to modern data commons capture.