LAW AND MONEY.

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Author: Mangan, Katherine S.

Two prominent legal scholars are leaving Harvard University for Vanderbilt University Law School, where they will help set up a doctoral program in law and economics.

W. Kip Viscusi, a professor of law and economics, and his wife, Joni Hersch, an adjunct professor in the same field, call the law-and-economics movement "the most important innovation in legal scholarship in the past half century."

They also say that Vanderbilt's program is different from the many other joint programs because it will be housed in the law school, rather than the economics department, and will more closely integrate the two disciplines.

But legal scholars are split on just how innovative Vanderbilt's program is. In recent years, a growing number of law schools, including those at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Yale University, Harvard, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, have teamed up with economics departments to offer such joint programs and degrees.

The George Mason University School of Law offers six law-and-economics degrees, although the doctoral program is housed in economics. Francesco Parisi, who directs the school's law-and-economics program, questioned Vanderbilt's assertion, in a news release announcing the appointments, that its will be the first Ph.D. program in law and economics in the country.

"Welcome to the club," he said. However, he added that with its new hires, Vanderbilt "is unquestionably moving very visibly and vigorously into the field of law and economics."

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By Katherine S. Mangan