Grajzl and Murrell on From Status to Contract? A Macrohistory from Early-Modern English Caselaw and Print Culture @wlunews

Peter Grajzl, Washington and Lee University, Department of Economics; CESifo, and Peter Murrell, University of Maryland, Department of Economics, have published From Status to Contract? A Macrohistory from Early-Modern English Caselaw and Print Culture as CESifo Working Paper No. 11246. Here is the abstract.

Most development models emphasize a growth in the scope of individual choice as the law becomes impartial, relevant to all. An early expression of this conceptualization appeared in the 19th century, when Henry Maine coined his celebrated dictum that progressive societies move from status to contract. We conduct a macro-historical quantitative inquiry into Maine's dictum using corpora on 16th- to 18th-century caselaw and print culture. Upon conceptualizing the notions of contract and status, we train word embeddings on each corpus and produce time series of emphases on contract, status, and contract versus status. Only caselaw exhibits an increasing emphasis on contract versus status, and even that trend is discernible only before the Civil War. After 1660 in caselaw, emphases on both contract and status increase, with no trend in contract versus status. After 1660, caselaw trends reflect the increasing importance of equity compared to common-law. In print culture, religion consistently emphasizes contract over status, while politics exhibits a downward-trending emphasis on contract versus status. VAR estimates reveal that the applicable ideas in caselaw and print culture coevolved.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.