In recent years, legal scholarship has been receptive to influence from the social sciences, especially from economics. While the introduction of economics into the study of law should be welcomed, at least one key claim of the Law and Economics school is deeply flawed, namely, the claim that they can replace legal judgement by "scientific" decision-making through application of the 'as if' individual rational choice utility (or wealth) maximization model. Good arguments against this claim are to be found in the legal literature, but these seem to have had little effect, possibly because the validity of the individual rational choice utility maximizing model in economics itself is usually taken for granted.

Economists know that, in fact, neither consumers nor businessmen are actually rational utility maximizers. This paper challenges Friedman's argument that because economists can successfully predict from a model which assumes that individuals behave as if they were rational utility maximizers, it doesn't matter whether or not they actually are. In fact, I will show that the assumption is pernicious in economics, and, if it is pernicious in economics, it is doubly so when the model is applied to law and legal decision-making.

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