ABSTRACT
This essay investigates the reasons why law remains excluded from the Nobel Prize system, arguing that this absence does not stem from a technical limitation of the legal discipline, but rather from a restrictive conception of science that marginalizes forms of normative and institutional rationality. Drawing on the critique developed by thinkers such as Twining, Ulen, Posner, Sandberg, Devlin, and Conard, the text demonstrates how law – despite its centrality to civilizational order – is epistemically devalued in comparison to disciplines grounded in empirical predictability and mathematical formalization.
The analysis is deepened by the observation that fundamental legal categories – such as contract, property, regulation, and responsibility – have been reformulated by Nobel laureate economists, without law being recognized as the original source of these concepts. Furthermore, it shows that jurists operating under authoritarian regimes are rendered invisible as producers of normativity, even when their actions uphold the very ideal of justice celebrated by the Prize. The essay concludes that the recognition of law requires more than the establishment of a prize: it demands a critical reconstruction of legal practice, of its scientific standing, and of its foundational role in shaping political and institutional life.
Barros, Nelson Guimaraes, he Absence of the Nobel Prize in Law: Between Scientific Recognition and the Civilizational Relevance of the Legal Order (May 12, 2025).
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