Chapter 13: Geoffrey Hodgson: An Institutionalist’s Institutionalist

When I first obtained a tenure-track position at the Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis in the early 1990s, I already was an interdisciplinary legal scholar, having written a doctoral dissertation cum book about the failure of environmental protection in People’s Poland. That dissertation contained chapters on both political and economic impediments to law enforcement that were endemic to the socialist political-economy of a country where the only lawful political party stood above the law. After that project, my interest in subjects outside of, but cognate to, law only increased. As a consequence, I was not only open to literatures outside of legal studies but actively sought them out. That is how I first encountered the work of Geoff Hodgson.