Overcoming the Antagonism Between Efficiency and Distributive Justice

Efficiency is a key objective of the Law & Economics movement that potentially is in an antagonistic relation to the more socially oriented distributive justice. But a closer look at the manifold roles of law and the legitimacy functions shows that measures exist for tempering the antagonism. In particular, justice failures must be avoided or overcome. Possible remedies are the standardisation of distributive justice principles through international guidelines and special regulatory “innovations” (such as the “regulatory impact analysis” and the “regulatory lookback”). The newest developments go in the direction of tensions mitigation.