The Hayek Lecture

Thursday, March 23

6:00 – 7:45 P.M., Lipton Hall (108 West Third Street), Reception to follow

The 16h Annual Friedrich A. Von Hayek Lecture

The Origins of System in Property Law

Presented by

Henry E. Smith

Fessenden Professor of Law 

Harvard Law School

Please RSVP here

Henry E. Smith is the Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he directs the Project on the Foundations of Private Law. Smith has written primarily on the law and economics of property, intellectual property, and remedies, with a focus on how property-related institutions lower information costs and constrain strategic behavior.

Drawing on then-new tools of systems theory, Hayek offered an alternative picture of law as a spontaneous order, by analogy to other social orders like the market and custom. This paper will argue that the tools of system theory also point to sources of order within the law: although law is not the deductive machine in the realist caricature, it is a loosely interconnected system of interlocking concepts that produces emergent properties of efficiency and justice (or their opposites) at the societal level. This kind of system is neither wholly spontaneous nor fully designed. For more information on the lecture, please visit Classical Liberal Institute's website. 

This event has been approved for 1.5 New York State CLE credits in the category of Areas of Professional Practice. The credit is both transitional and non-transitional; it is appropriate for both experienced and newly admitted attorneys.