Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) Law as a Product

The law sets a framework for market transactions and competition. However, in recent years, the law itself has become a commodity in many regions of the world and in various fields: especially corporate, bankruptcy and contract law, not to mention the settlement of disputes. Individuals and companies search for the most attractive rules of law and states compete for the favour of demanders through their offers. Since legal competition has been the object of preliminary empirical explorations in the past years, the CAS research focus now aims to focus on its normative implications. How should one assess the fact that law can be "traded" on markets – just like any other good? Besides jurisprudence, various disciplines – such as economics, philosophy, political science and sociology – will apply different evaluation criteria and provide different answers to this question.