Should laws be made in courts or in parliaments? Orlin Yalnazov proposes
a new approach to the problem. He conceptualizes law as an information
product, and law-making as an exercise in production. Law-making has
inputs and outputs, and technology is used to transform one into the
other. Law may, depending on input and technology, take on different
forms: it can be vague or it can be certain. The 'technologies' between
which we may choose are precedent and statute. Differences between the
two being sizeable, our choice has significant repercussions for the
cost of the input and the form of the output. The author applies this
framework to several problems, including the comparison between the
common and the civil law, comparative civil procedure, and EU law.
Perhaps most critically, he offers a critique of the 'efficiency of the
common law' hypothesis.