New Era Economic Law

water, spring (2026): New Era Economic Law. Forthcoming in:

Abstract

This paper establishes the theoretical framework of the School of Legal-Economic Isomorphism, arguing that law and economy exist not in a relationship of mutual influence, but in an isomorphic relationship of definition and being defined.

Drawing on comparative historical analysis spanning from the Code of Hammurabi and Fuxi’s trigrams to the Roosevelt New Deal, the study distills three sub-laws of civilizational evolution: the Law of Productivity Step-Functions, the Law of Legal Reconstruction, and the Law of Alignment Synchronization.

It diagnoses the persistent global economic stagnation of the past two decades as a “Temporal Misalignment” between industrial-age legal frameworks and digital-age productive forces. The paper introduces core analytical concepts—Digital Public Infrastructure, Digital Easement, Digital Rent, and Rentier Capitalism—to demonstrate that large digital platforms function not as private stores but as digital land extracting feudal-like rents.

The study proposes a constitutional-level institutional engineering program for the digital age, including the publicization of platforms, the prohibition of digital rent, and the establishment of data public ownership, while critically transcending existing schools of Law and Economics, Institutional Economics, and Marxist Political Economy.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Legal-Economic Isomorphism; Constitutional Reconstruction; Digital Public Infrastructure; Digital Rent; Platform Economy; Temporal Misalignment; Rentier Capitalism; Institutional Engineering; Law and Economics
• Subjects: K - Law and Economics > K0 - General; K - Law and Economics > K1 - Basic Areas of Law; K - Law and Economics > K2 - Regulation and Business Law

References

Coase, R. H. (1960). The Problem of Social Cost. Journal of Law and Economics , 3, 1-44. Hammurabi. (c. 1754 BCE). Code of Hammurabi . Justinian I. (534 CE). Corpus Juris Civilis . Keynes, J. M. (1936). The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money . Macmillan. Marx, K. (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , Vol. 1. Hamburg: Otto Meissner. North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance . Cambridge University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation . New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Roosevelt, F. D. (1933-1939). New Deal Legislative Series, including the Securities Exchange Act and the Social Security Act. Shang Yang. (356 BCE). Shang Jun Shu (Book of Lord Shang). Williamson, O. E. (1985). The Economic Institutions of Capitalism . New York: Free Press. Note: This monograph is an original theoretical work. The above references constitute the primary intellectual and historical foundations with which the Legal-Economic Isomorphism framework engages.