SOCIAL NORMS, SOCIAL MEANING, AND ECONOMIC-ANALYSIS OF LAW - A COMMENT

This commentary on the papers given at the Conference on Social Norms, Social Meaning, and the Economic Analysis of Law at the University of Chicago Law School summarizes and criticizes the papers briefly; emph asizes the promise of signaling theory, as illustrated by several of t he papers, to cast new Light on social interactions, norms, and law; i nvites attention to the importance of selection phenomena in the opera tion of norms; underscores the compatibility of economic analysis of l aw with economic analysis of norms; questions the utility of ''social meaning'' as an analytic category; and denies that norms analysis cons titutes a ''paradigm shift'' in the economic approach to law and socia l control.