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The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology
and Concepts
Francesco Parisi
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017 Subject: Economics and Finance
Online Publication Date: May 2017
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(p. iv)
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
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List of Figures
Francesco Parisi
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017 Subject: Economics and Finance
Online Publication Date: May 2017
(p. ix)
List of Figures
2.1 The General Transaction Structure22
11.1 Horizontal Policy Competition229
11.2 Horizontal Policy Competition with Law Instruments230
11.3 Two-Dimensional Horizontal Policy Competition with Law231
11.4 Vertical Policy Competition with Legal Doctrines (Rules and Standards)233
11.5 Vertical Policy Competition with Law Decision Instruments236
11.6 Internal Policy Competition with Doctrines240
(p. x)
List of Tables
Francesco Parisi
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017 Subject: Economics and Finance
Online Publication Date: May 2017
(p. xi)
List of Tables
5.1 Sample Decision Structure91
17.1 Mention of “Benefit–Cost” or “Cost Benefit” in Legal Cases356
17.2 Law Review and Related Journals: Number of Articles with the Term “Cost Benefit” or “Benefit Cost”356
17.3 The Measurement of Benefits and Costs in Terms of Gains and Losses359
17.4 Present Values of One Million360
17.5 Basic Steps in Benefit–Cost Analysis361
17.6 Coleman’s Preference Reversal Example369
17.7 Certainty Equivalent Rates Within the Burgess–Zerbe Range374
24.1 An Example of the Doctrinal Paradox508
(p. xii)
List of Contributors
Francesco Parisi
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017 Subject: Economics and Finance
Online Publication Date: May 2017
(p. xiii) List of Contributors
The late Gary Becker
Brian H. Bix University of Minnesota Law School
John Bronsteen Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Christopher Buccafusco Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University
Emanuela Carbonara University of Bologna
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci University of Amsterdam
Gerrit De Geest Washington University, St. Louis
David M. Driesen Syracuse University College of Law
Daniel A. Farber University of California, Berkeley
Jonah B. Gelbach Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania
Werner Güth Max Planck Institute of Economics
Charles A. Holt University of Virginia
Christine Jolls Yale Law School
Jonathan Klick University of Pennsylvania Law School
Robin Paul Malloy Syracuse University College of Law
Jonathan S. Masur University of Chicago Law School
Thomas J. Miceli University of Connecticut
Pam A. Mueller Princeton University
Janice Nadler Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Shmuel Nitzan Bar Ilan University
Jacob Paroush Bar Ilan University
Richard Posner United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and University of Chicago Law School (p. xiv)
Shruti Rajagopalan State University of New York
Mario J. Rizzo New York University
Chris William Sanchirico University of Pennsylvania Law School
Sean P. Sullivan Federal Trade Commission
Emerson H. Tiller Northwestern University
Tom R. Tyler Yale Law School
Georg Vanberg Duke University
Viktor Vanberg Albert Ludwigs Universitaet, Freiburg
Stefan Voigt University of Hamburg
Georg von Wangenheim University of Kassel
Tess Wilkinson-Ryan University of Pennsylvania Law School
Donald Wittman University of California, Santa Cruz
Richard O. Zerbe University of Washington
The Future of Law and Economics
Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017
Subject: Economics and Finance, Law and Economics, Econometrics, Experimental and Quantitative Methods
Online Publication Date: May 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199684267.013.002
Abstract and Keywords
This exchange between Judge Posner and Professor Becker — two founding fathers of our discipline — was composed almost three years ago, but the perspective and wisdom of this exchange remains most relevant to this day. Since then, Professor Becker has died; Judge Posner has added a brief remembrance of Becker at the end of this exchange.
Keywords:law and economics movement,Chicago school,Gary Becker,Richard Posner
THISexchange between Judge Posner and Professor Becker—two founding fathers of our discipline—was composed almost three years ago, but the perspective and wisdom of this exchange remains most relevant to this day. Since then, Professor Becker has died; Judge Posner has added a brief remembrance of Becker at the end of this exchange.
POSNER: The future of an evolving academic field belongs to the young. They know what their elders know, and their careers depend on their being able to build on existing knowledge in creative ways. The old are likely to be in a defensive crouch, fearing that the young will build their careers in part on rejecting, or at best superseding, the work of their elders. So, in reading what follows: caveat emptor. The modern field of “law and economics” (that is, of economic analysis of law) dates from the 1960s. Until then, Jeremy Bentham’s economic analysis of criminal law having been forgotten, economics was thought relevant to only a few fields of law, all commercial—antitrust law, public utility and common carrier regulation, and tax law. By the end of the 1960s, as a result of articles (and the occasional book) by William Baxter, Gary Becker, Guido Calabresi, Ronald Coase, Harold Demsetz, William Landes, Henry Manne, and others, economics was understood to be relevant to the entire domain of the law—relevant both to understanding the law (positive analysis) and to reforming it (normative analysis). That was half a century ago. In the intervening period the evolution of law and economics has been shaped by a number of forces: the increased mathematization of eco
nomics (including advances in techniques of statistical analysis); the increased availability of statistical data usable in empirical analyses utilizing the latest statistical techniques, as a result of the computer revolution; the broadening of the scope of economics both conceptually (as in the rise of game theory and the advent of behavioral economics—the invasion of economics by psychology) and in the areas of human activity that are studied by economists (marriage and divorce, for example); the increased size and “academification” of the legal professoriat; and, related to a number of these developments, increased specialization of academic law. The early contributors to the field of law and economics were economists and lawyers—not lawyer-economists—and they tended to write across legal domains. So Becker, for example, studied both racial discrimination and criminal law enforcement, and Coase both tort law and communications regulation, and Baxter both patent law and environmental law. Very little of the work of this early period was either mathematical or statistical (or empirical at all). But beginning in the 1970s economists such as Steven Shavell built increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of legal phenomena. It began to be felt that legal training alone would not enable a lawyer to do sophisticated economic analysis of law, and so economic analysis of law increasingly became the province of law professors who had a Ph.D. in economics, as well as of economists specializing in the application of economics to law who did not have a law degree. During the 1970s, economic analysis of law began to permeate legal teaching as well as scholarship, and economic consultants and expert witnesses became fixtures of commercial litigation in a variety of fields—in part because lawyers were learning in law school how economics could be used in legal analysis. Most of these consultants and witnesses were not and are not economic analysts of law, but rather analysts of business practices challenged in litigation. The trend toward increased economic sophistication in the 1970s, which has continued ever since, has had a side effect of increasing the separation between academic economic analysis of law and the practice of law. The two-degree scholars generally don’t have time to engage in law practice to any significant extent (often no more than a one-year clerkship with a judge) before beginning their academic careers. The increased formalization of economics makes it difficult for lawyers who do not have training in economics to collaborate with economists or lawyer-economists. Increasingly, economic analysts of law write for each other, in specialized journals, rather than for the larger profession. Increasingly, indeed, they write not for economic analysts of law as a whole but for economic analysts of the writer’s subspecialty. The expansion of a field leads to the multiplication of its subspecialties. These developments have increased, and will continue to increase, the rigor of economic analysis of law. The search for new worlds to conquer that is a hallmark of a progressive research program has already paid off. One example is increased attention to the economics of foreign and international law and, concomitantly, increased exploitation of the opportunities that cross-country comparison provides for empirical study. Another example is the empirical study of judicial behavior, where insights from labor economics and the economics of organizations are being used to interpret the large
quantities of statistical data that are available (or readily obtainable) concerning the activities of courts and judges. But the gap between academic law and economics and the law as it is practiced and administered and created and applied is troublesome. Economic analysis of law has intrinsic intellectual interest (like jurisprudence) and is an invaluable component of a modern legal education, but one would also like to see it contribute to the solution of legal problems and the reform of our costly and cumbersome legal institutions. And for that the economic analyst needs to understand law from the inside, which no one, however bright, can do without legal experience (though it might be acquired, on the side as it were, after one had begun an academic career) as well as legal training, for law is like a foreign language. And to avoid the amateurishness of underspecialization, there is a pressing need for greater collaboration between law professors with real legal experience and economists or lawyer-economists who have the analytic tools but not the insider’s understanding of the law in action and in its manifold institutional forms. There is also need for economic analysts of law, whether they are lawyers or economists or lawyer-economists, to interact with, and sometimes collaborate with, economists in economic departments and business schools who may be interested in law and may have special economic skills to bring to its study, an example being Andrei Shleifer of the Harvard economics department. The limited amount of such interaction and collaboration is reflected in the slow reaction of economic analysts of law to the financial crash of September 2008 and the ensuing downward spiral of the economy. The legal profession was deeply involved in the creation of the complex financial instruments that crashed and, of course, in the creation, un-creation, and administration of the regulatory laws and institutions governing finance. Yet about these instruments and practices and regulations—the Federal Reserve Act, for example, or the debt ceiling, or the eurozone—economic analysts of law have been largely silent (though not entirely— think of Lucian Bebchuk at Harvard Law School and the finance group at Columbia Law School), even though the economic crisis is about to enter its fourth year (fifth, if we count from December 2007, when GDP first began to dip). Predictions of the future are almost always just extrapolations. I will conclude in that vein. I expect economic analysis of law to grow in rigor, expand in scope, and becoming increasingly empirical as statistical databases become ever easier to create and analyze. Up to now the ratio of theoretical to empirical economic analysis of law has been very high, in part because theoretical papers can be produced much more quickly than empirical studies, and (unfortunately) number of papers published is given undue weight in hiring and tenure decisions. That is a concern and another (which is related however to reluctance to undertake empirical studies) is that economic analysis of law may lose influence by becoming too esoteric, too narrow, too hermetic, too out of touch with the practices and institutions that it studies.
BECKER: Posner gives an excellent discussion of the evolution of the field of law and economics, with the glaring omission of his own monumental contributions
The Future of Law and Economics
that fundamentally helped define the approaches, techniques, and scope of this field. I will go over some of the same ground as he does on its evolution and likely future, and I will also add brief comments on the emerging and exciting subfield of macro law and economics. The first stage of research on law and economics was mainly theoretical. Economists and lawyers used and adapted concepts and analysis from economics to show that legal rules and doctrines often had a clear economic rationale, and to show how these concepts illuminated how laws and legal systems affect behavior and the efficiency of economic outcomes. These early studies had an enormous influence on how some lawyers and economists began to think about property, contracts, negotiations, trials and settlements, torts, antitrust, corporations and securities, crime, racial and gender discrimination, and other areas of the law. Yet it took a while for these ideas to spread into law schools since academic and other lawyers initially had little exposure to the economic way of thinking. Partly for this reason, considerable opposition developed to many of the ideas espoused by the economists and other pioneers in law and economics. Gradually, however, opposition weakened (although it has not disappeared) as newer generations of lawyers became better qualified to appreciate and evaluate the contributions of this new field. At the same time, the gain from mainly arbitraging theoretical ideas from economics into the field of law began to lose steam. This was in good part because the early contributions were mainly theoretical, with only occasional support from legal cases, and with still less frequent support from quantitative analysis. Theory alone cannot keep a field vibrant, although it can substantially shift the approaches to different issues. No field that deals with human behavior has ever remained exciting and innovative by relying on theoretical ideas alone, no matter how valuable these ideas are. A vibrant and creative field requires a continual dialogue between theory and evidence from the real world that not only helps test existing theories, but also suggests new theories that can then also be tested and extended, or rejected. Fortunately, as the first theoretical stage was slowing down, perhaps because opportunities to arbitrage economic ideas into law were shrinking, a second stage began that collected and analyzed quantitative data. This quantitative approach uses statistical techniques also drawn mainly from economics to analyze antitrust cases, contracts, litigation, intellectual property, divorce, crime, discrimination, and many other areas of the law. Quantitative analysis has become one of the most exciting frontiers in law and economics, since extensive legal data exists, often in rudimentary forms. These data can test, discard, or help in the reformulation of the theories on the effects of laws and legal rulings on behavior. Most participants in any field, including law and economics, specialize. Some are mainly theorists, while others are mainly empiricists. For a field to remain relevant, however, many researchers must be both, relating theories to real-world data. Otherwise, theories become sterile as theorists mainly discuss what other theorists said, and empiricists become mainly number crunchers, with little effort to interpret the data in other than ad hoc ways. This is why I believe an exciting further development in law and economics will involve extensive interactions between theory and empirical analysis. Some
lawyers will cooperate with economists, but even then it would be valuable for the lawyers to acquire not only the rudiments of economic theory, but also basic econometric and other techniques for analyzing data. Economists involved in this research should also acquire some knowledge of legal opinions and how legal systems operate. Indeed, a growing number of individuals with both a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics are beginning to bridge this gap. The great majority of research in law and economics has been at the “micro” level in the sense of considering the behavior of parties to contracts, torts, crime, and other individual and business behavior. This research has been fundamental, but a newer and also important research focus considers the interactions between legal systems and the macro economy. This research, pioneered by economists Daron Acemoglou and Andrei Shliefer, among others, analyzes the connections between legal systems and long-term rates of growth, the degree of economic inequality, aggregate investments, and other macroeconomic variables. To a lesser extent, this burgeoning literature also analyzes how macroeconomic developments affect the evolution of legal systems. Scarcity of data often limits how much can be achieved empirically in understanding the macro interactions between laws and economics, although the creation of long time series for many countries on relevant legal and economic variables is widening the database. I expect the macro interaction between law and economics to become another major frontier as the discipline of law and economics pushes its boundaries and insights into uncharted territories.
POSNER: Gary Becker—In Memoriam. The death of Gary Becker, on May 3, 2014, at the age of 83, was a great loss to economics, including to economic analysis of law, a field of economics in which he was a pioneer (one of a number of important economic fields in which he was a pioneer—others being the economics of discrimination, of crime, of education, of human capital, of labor, of addiction, of altruism, of organ donation, and of marriage and the family). He was unquestionably one of the greatest economists of the twentieth century (and the beginning of the twentyfirst). We had been friends for almost half a century and I learned a great deal from him. His particular importance to economic analysis of law derived from the emphasis he placed in his economic work on non-market behavior, such as crime and discrimination and the family, because so much of law is concerned with regulating that behavior. The regulation of economic activity in the narrow sense is an important concern of law, but an economics of law that focused only on the regulation of such activity, and therefore on fields such as antitrust, securities, tax, labor, bankruptcy, and commercial law, would be seriously incomplete. He died rather suddenly, his mental powers unimpaired by age. He will be missed.
Acknowledgments
Source: <http://www.law.uchicago.edu/alumni/magazine/fall11/lawandecon-future> (2011). This exchange between Judge Posner and Professor Becker was composed in the
fall of 2011. Becker had thanked William Landes and William Hubbard for helpful comments; Posner had thanked Landes for helpful comments. (p. 6)
Gary S. Becker
Gary S. Becker, University Professor, University of Chicago; Professor, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Richard A. Posner
Richard A. Posner, Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School.
Economic Models of Law
Thomas J. Miceli
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts
Edited by Francesco Parisi
Print Publication Date: Apr 2017
Subject: Economics and Finance, Law and Economics, Econometrics, Experimental and Quantitative Methods
Online Publication Date: May 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199684267.013.003
Abstract and Keywords
This article discusses the use of economic models for understanding law. It begins by describing the nature of economic models in general, and then turns to the specific application of economic models to law. It distinguishes between ‘economic analysis of law’, which concerns the use of economic theory for describing the incentive effects of legal rules (positive analysis) and for prescribing better rules (normative analysis); and ‘law and economics’, which concerns the relationship between law and markets as alternative institutions for organizing economic activity. The article concludes with some comments on the actual process of building economic models of law.
Keywords:economic models,economic analysis of law,law and economics
2.1 Introduction
PHYSICISTShave long pondered the epistemological question of why mathematics appears to be so effective in describing the natural world. Einstein, for example, once asked, “How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?” (Livio, 2009, p. 1). The remarkable power of mathematics has even prompted some philosophers to wonder whether mathematical truths are invented or discovered by humans. Social scientists were somewhat later in recognizing the usefulness of mathematics, but they have also successfully employed mathematical models to describe human behavior. The application of economic models to law is an even more recent development, reflecting the general expansion of economic reasoning to behaviors outside of the traditional market setting. This trend represents a recognition that economics is defined not by the subject matter that it studies (markets), but by the methodology that it brings to bear in describing rational decision-making in whatever context it occurs.1
Economic Models of Law
Law is an ideal subject matter in this respect because, like economics, it is largely concerned with incentives. According to the axiom of rationality, which is the foundation of economic decision-making, individuals act to maximize their well-being (however that is measured), subject to the various constraints that they face. In a market setting, these constraints consist of income and prices; in law they consist of legal sanctions. The application of economic analysis to law specifically presumes that individuals view the threat of sanctions—whether in the form of fines, damages, or imprisonment—as implicit prices that can be set to guide behavior in certain socially desirable directions. In this view, notions of “legality” and “illegality” are stripped of their moral or ethical connotations and instead are interpreted according to a functionalist view of law.
(p. 10) The great American legal scholar and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. anticipated this approach when, in his classic article “The Path of the Law,” he described his so-called “prediction theory” of law (Holmes, 1897). The key figure in this theory is the “bad man,” who represents the classic rational maximizer from economic theory. The bad man is not an immoral agent, but rather is amoral in the sense that he will break the law when the gains from doing so exceed the costs. Thus, “[i]f you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict” (Holmes, 1897, p. 459). This view of law may strike many as crass, especially those who obey the law out of a sense of moral obligation rather than a fear of punishment, but to examine the incentive effects of law, it is necessary to focus on those individuals for whom it is a binding constraint. That is what economic models of law seek to do.
The remainder of this chapter examines the use of economic models for understanding law as a social institution. It begins by describing the nature of economic models in general, and then turns to the specific application of economic models to legal relationships. It concludes with some practical comments on building economic models of law.
2.2 The Nature of Economic Models
As a social science, economics relies heavily on models, mostly mathematical, as a way of simplifying the world. Without the use of models, it would be impossible to disentangle the myriad causal relationships that characterize the operation of a complex social system like the marketplace or the legal system. To be sure, there is a necessary sacrifice in reality when using a model to isolate a particular phenomenon, but the hope is that the factors that are excluded from the model are extraneous to the particular question of interest and so can be safely ignored, at least as a first approximation. The extent to which a model succeeds in isolating the essential features of an issue is an indication of its “goodness.” Economists use two basic approaches to evaluate the goodness of their models:2 the first is to evaluate the quality of the assumptions, and the second is to use empirical evidence to test whether the model accurately predicts behavior.
The assumptions of an economic model define the specific relationships that will be studied and the factors that will be excluded from analysis—in other words, what variables are endogenous and what variables are exogenous. In this sense, they are the counterpart to controls in a laboratory experiment. The validity, or quality, of the assumptions determines how believable the conclusions of the model are, because once the assumptions are in place, the results follow logically from the structure of the model. Most debates over economic models therefore focus on the assumptions: in particular, has the essence of the issue been captured, and are only inessential factors excluded? (p. 11) In many cases these are subjective questions, and so the skillful choice of assumptions is often characterized as an “art.”3
The second test of a model is whether it can predict or explain the real world.4 This is where theory meets empiricism; that is, where data or other forms of empirical analysis, like case studies, are used to test the predictions of a model. As in physics, economists tend to specialize in either theoretical or empirical analysis, but even those scholars who are exclusively interested in theory need to develop their models with an eye toward making testable predictions, for according to the scientific method, a model that fails the empirical test, no matter how elegant, should either be discarded or revised.
Although economic models can vary widely in their specific techniques and methodologies, they usually share certain characteristics. First, they nearly always start by positing rationality on the part of the relevant decision-makers, at least some of the time.5 Second, the setting in which agents act is limited by the assumptions of the model, which, as discussed above, allows the researcher to focus on the particular question(s) of interest. Finally, economic models distinguish between positive and normative analysis; that is, between analysis that is meant to describe or predict behavior in a particular institutional setting, and analysis that is meant to prescribe a better outcome or policy based on some articulated social norm such as efficiency. Economic models of law come in both varieties, depending on whether the goal is to understand the origin or describe the impact of a particular legal rule, or to propose a better one. I will provide examples of both types of analysis below.
2.3 Economic Models of Law
The application of economic analysis to law has a long history, dating back at least to the criminal law theories ofBeccaria (1986 [1764])and Bentham (1969 [1789]). Surprisingly, however, the idea that laws could be interpreted as creating incentives for behavior did not seem to resurface again until the 1960s with the work ofCoase (1960)on externalities,Calabresi (1961)on accident law, andBecker (1968)on criminal law. Since then, of course, the application of law to economics has blossomed into a major field in both law and economics.6
(p. 12) Most critics of the economic approach to law argue that it is inappropriate to evaluate the law based on the norm of efficiency. The goal of the law should instead be to pursue justice or fairness, however those objectives are defined. Richard Posner, one of the
Economic Models of Law
founding fathers of law and economics, has responded to this criticism in two ways. First, he argues that justice in the sense of distributional equity is a value that most economists also recognize, along with efficiency, as relevant in judging the performance of the market or the legal system. And although economists have no special insight into what degree of distributional equity is desirable, they have a lot so say about the feasibility of attaining different outcomes and the amount of sacrifice of overall wealth that would be necessary to achieve a particular distributional goal. Second, he argues that one meaning of “justice” may in fact be efficiency because “in a world of scarce resources waste should be regarded as immoral” (Posner, 2003, p. 27).
Kaplow and Shavell (2002)have argued that social welfare, which they define as the aggregation of some index of the well-being of all members of society, should be the sole basis for evaluating legal policy. According to this view, fairness matters for legal rule-making, but only insofar as it affects people’s well-being (that is, to the extent that they care about fairness). At the same time, narrow concepts of efficiency like pure wealth maximization (or Kaldor–Hicks efficiency) are inappropriate because they exclude factors (like fairness) that people value. It is nevertheless the case that most law and economic analysis focuses on wealth maximization as the objective. Although changes in legal rules will often affect the distribution of income, it will usually be quite difficult to ascertain these effects, and in any case, tinkering with legal rules will not generally be the best means of achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth, or will entail a trade-off between fairness and efficiency. For example, the assignment of liability for product-related damages will likely affect both the distribution of wealth between businesses and consumers, and their incentives to avoid accidents. The fact that there exist alternative mechanisms for redistributing wealth that have no relation to products liability (such as the income tax and welfare systems) suggests that the liability system should be used solely for creating incentives to minimize accident costs.7 Thus, the mainstream approach to law and economics, most often associated with the “Chicago school,” has for the most part employed the wealth-maximization approach to the development of economic models of law.
The following two sections provide specific examples of the use of economic models for understanding law. I divide the discussion into two sections based on what I perceive to be two distinct approaches to modeling law. The first, which I call “economic analysis of law,” uses economic models to describe the structure and function of law; and the second, which I call “law and economics,” examines the relationship between law and markets as alternative social institutions for organizing economic activity.
(p. 13)
2.4 Economic Analysis of Law
By economic analysis of law I mean the use of economic models to evaluate legal rules. The positive version of this approach uses economic methods to examine the law as it is. It thus addresses questions about how the law affects behavior, but often goes further to argue that the various doctrines of the common law reflect an underlying economic logic. This view, first put forward by Richard Posner, maintains that the goal of efficiency has
somehow become embedded in the law. Normative analysis, in contrast, asks how the law can be improved to better achieve the goal of efficiency, though as noted, other norms can be incorporated into the analysis. Mainstream economic analysis of law encompasses both positive and normative analysis. I first illustrate positive analysis as it has been applied to the analysis of tort law, but then extend the logic derived from study of that area to other areas of law. I then turn to the economic model of criminal law, as first formalized byBecker (1968), to illustrate normative analysis.
2.4.1 The Economic Model of Tort Law
The use of tort liability to internalize harmful externalities is a straightforward extension of the theory of Pigovian taxation. The main difference is that tort law is administered privately through the judicial system rather than publicly by a regulatory authority. In the context of a simple externality model, however, there is no difference (at least in terms of deterrence) between a tax and an equivalent imposition of liability. The real insights, I contend, emerge from the application of the model to negligence law.
Ironically, the first use of an explicitly mathematical model of negligence was by a judge in the famous case of U.S. v. Carroll Towing Co. 8 In that case, Judge Learned Hand proposed his eponymous test for determining negligence, which says that an injurer who fails to take care should be found negligent if B<PL, where B is the cost (or burden) of care, P is the probability that an accident will occur, and L is the damage, or loss, in the event of an accident. AsPosner (1972)argued, this standard, when properly interpreted in its marginal form, creates exactly the right incentives for injurers to invest in efficient accident avoidance. In particular, the PL must be interpreted as the expected marginal reduction in accident costs, and B must be interpreted as the marginal cost of care.
To see how the Hand test creates incentives for efficient behavior in this setting, suppose that taking care is efficient in the above sense, or that B<PL. A court will therefore find an injurer negligent if he failed to take care and an accident occurs. Thus, the injurer knows that by spending the B on accident prevention, he or she can avoid a larger expected cost of PL. A rational person will therefore take care. In contrast, if care is not efficient, or B>PL, the court will not find the injurer negligent if he or she failed to take (p. 14) care and an accident occurs. The injurer therefore has no incentive to invest in care because there is no benefit from doing so. In both cases, the injurer makes the efficient choice.
The key point is that a negligence rule creates efficient incentives for potential injurers regarding accident prevention because it creates a threshold of behavior—the so-called “due care” standard—that shields them from liability if they meet that standard. Injurers thus have a strong incentive to do so. Strict liability also induces injurers to invest in efficient accident prevention by imposing full liability on them for any accident losses that they cause. Injurers therefore cannot escape liability by taking efficient (due) care, but they still have an incentive to be careful so as to minimize their overall exposure to accident costs (prevention plus liability). The importance of this distinction in the way negli
Economic Models of Law
gence and strict liability work becomes apparent when the simple accident model is extended to allow victims as well as injurers to take precaution—that is, by making it a “bilateral” rather than “unilateral” care model.
In bilateral care contexts, imposing strict liability on injurers is not generally efficient because, although it induces efficient injurer care, victims have little or no incentive to be careful due to the moral hazard problem. In contrast, the negligence rule potentially creates incentives for both injurers and victims to invest in efficient accident prevention. The intuitive reason for this striking result can be illustrated as follows. As demonstrated above, the due care standard creates a strong incentive for injurers to meet the standard in order to avoid liability, which implies that any accident losses will remain on the victim. And since victims rationally anticipate this outcome, they too have an incentive to invest in efficient accident prevention so as to minimize their expected losses. The negligence rule thus induces efficient prevention by both injurers and victims because it combines the two methods for creating efficient incentives. Specifically, it sets a threshold level of care so that the injurer can avoid liability by meeting the threshold (as described above), and it simultaneously imposes full damages on the victim, thus eliminating the moral hazard problem.9
The preceding argument illustrates the superiority of negligence over strict liability in bilateral accident settings, but the logic of the argument has implications beyond tort law. In particular, it reveals the general usefulness of “threshold rules” for creating bilateral incentives. As noted, the problem with a rule of strict liability was that (p. 15) the awarding of compensation to victims eliminates any incentives for them to avoid the accident because they (theoretically) expect to be made whole.10 This problem is a consequence of the dual function of liability to deter dangerous activities and to compensate victims of those activities. Deterrence and compensation are perfectly compatible when only injurers can take precaution (as in the unilateral care model), but when victims can also take precaution, the compensatory and incentive functions come into conflict, a situation that Cooter (1985)refers to as the “paradox of compensation.” The problem is the requirement that any money that the injurer is required to pay in liability must be passed on to the victim as compensation, thus precluding so-called “decoupling” of liability and compensation.11 The brilliance of the negligence rule is that it resolves this paradox by establishing a standard of behavior that the injurer can meet to avoid liability, thereby giving the victim an incentive to invest in precaution so as to minimize her own damages.12 Beginning withBrown (1973),13 economists have formally shown that this approach works perfectly to create efficient bilateral incentives if the due care standard is set at the injurer’s cost-minimizing level of care, as described in the example above.
Grady (1988, p. 16) identifies the key feature of negligence law that allows it to coordinate the behavior of injurers and victims in this way: “if each party is placed in a position where its conduct is judged on the assumption that the other side has taken appropriate precautions, then it would act in the socially appropriate manner.” Game theory is the perfect methodology for formalizing this idea because it shows that efficient care by both injurers and victims, acting in ignorance of the other’s behavior, is the Nash equilibrium
of a non-cooperative game under a properly designed negligence rule. Specifically, efficient care is the “best response” of each party under the presumption that the other party is also taking efficient care. What’s more, the law of negligence actually requires parties who find themselves in risky situations to hold such presumptions; that is, to assume that other parties with whom they may come in contact are taking ordinary care (Keeton et al., 1984, p. 240). In this way the law facilitates the attainment of the efficient equilibrium by compelling parties to hold Nash conjectures about what others are doing.14
(p. 16)
2.4.2 Extending the Logic: the Model of Precaution
Cooter (1985)revealed the power of economic models to provide a unifying framework for law when he used Brown’s accident model—what he called the “model of precaution”—to demonstrate an underlying unity in torts, contracts, and property law. The key insight was Cooter’s recognition that most legal conflicts, regardless of the subject matter, can be conceptualized as “bilateral care” problems in the sense that they involve a dispute between two parties (a plaintiff and defendant), each possessing the ability to take some action to avoid or mitigate the resulting “damages.” Cooter illustrated this approach by showing that the basic accident model that Brown had used to evaluate the efficiency of various liability rules in tort law can also be used to examine certain rules in both contract and property law.
In contract law, for example, Cooter interpreted the breach of a contractual promise as an “accident,” where the “injurer” is the breaching party (the promisor), and the “victim” is the party to whom the promise was made (the promisee). (The fact that the breach is often a deliberate act rather than an “accident” does not alter the mathematical logic of the model.) The promisor’s “care” in this setting is the decision of whether (or when) to breach the contract, and the promisee’s “care” is how much to invest in reliance on performance, which determines the amount of loss in the event of breach. In this context, one can show that awarding victims full damages for breach (the “expectation damage” measure) is like strict liability in torts because it creates efficient incentives for promisors to avoid breach, but inadequate incentives for promisees to mitigate damages. (Specifically, they overrely on performance.) Cooter showed, however, that a rule that limits damages to the amount that promisors could have reasonably foreseen will, like negligence, create efficient incentives for both parties. Note that such a rule essentially establishes a threshold for the promisor by limiting the promisor’s liability to the level of damages that would result from efficient promisee reliance.15 In this sense, it creates the same efficient bilateral incentives as a negligence rule.
Cooter’s application of the model of precaution to property law concerns government takings of private property under eminent domain. In this context, the injurer’s care corresponds to the government’s taking decision, while the victim’s care represents the landowner’s initial investment in improvements to the land, which determines the value of the lost property in the event of a taking. Miceli and Segerson (1994,1996) apply this model to the law of regulatory takings and show that efficient decisions by both regulators and landowners can be achieved by a conditional (threshold) compensation rule that
requires the government to pay compensation only when it inefficiently regulates a piece of land. They go on to interpret the extensive case law in this area in light of the model, an exercise in positive analysis.
(p. 17) The preceding examples illustrate the usefulness of economic models for unifying disparate areas of law. In each of the examples, the problem was to design a rule for coordinating the behavior of parties engaged in an activity that would potentially involve them in a legal dispute. Although the actual rules that have arisen in these different areas vary in their outward form, Cooter’s analysis shows that they often embody the same inherent mathematical structure. In this sense, the law has converged on similar solutions (though often in different forms) to a common set of economic problems.16 The value of economic models is that they reveal this common structure by isolating the essential elements of the problem.
This conclusion naturally raises the question of where this underlying unity in the law came from. This is a central question in the positive economic theory of law, which asserts that the common law displays an inherent economic logic. Originally, Posner attributed this underlying logic to the decision-making of judges, who he claimed actively promote efficiency because they “cannot do much … to alter the slices of the pie that various groups in society receive, [so] they might as well concentrate on increasing its size” (Posner, 2003, p. 252). Other scholars, however, have attempted to show that efficiency can emerge without the conscious help of judges based on the argument that the common law, like the competitive market, is driven by invisible-hand type forces that propel it in the direction of efficiency. A large literature has arisen to evaluate the merits of this argument.17
2.4.3 Normative Analysis: The Economics of Crime
I conclude the current discussion by offering an illustration of normative analysis based on the economic theory of law enforcement as first formalized byBecker (1968)and elaborated on by Polinsky and Shavell (2000,2007), among others. Although many of the prescriptions of the Becker–Polinsky–Shavell (BPS) model of criminal law are in fact compatible with actual law enforcement practices (representing further examples of positive analysis), I will highlight here a couple of divergences as a way of showing how economic theory can prescribe more efficient (though not necessarily more desirable) policies.
The economic approach to crime control is based on the assumption that rational offenders decide whether or not to commit an illegal act by comparing the dollar value of the gains from the act to the expected cost, which is equal to the magnitude of the sanction multiplied by the probability of apprehension and conviction. Given the goal (p. 18) of deterrence, the optimal law enforcement policy prescribed by the BPS model involves choosing the probability of apprehension, the type of criminal sanction (a fine and/or prison), and its magnitude, to minimize the overall cost of crime.
Economic Models of Law
The standard BPS model asserts that efficiency is the (primary) norm for deriving the optimal enforcement policy. Although minimizing the cost of operating the system is surely an important goal, actual policies often diverge from the prescriptions of the BPS model, suggesting that other goals are also relevant. I will give two examples. First, the BPS model says that the optimal sanction, whether a fine or imprisonment, should be maximal. The reason this is true for a fine is clear: offenders only care about the expected sanction, pf, and since it is costly to raise the probability of apprehension, p, but not the fine, f, it is cost-minimizing to raise the fine as much as possible (up to the offender’s wealth) before raising the probability. Less obviously, when the sanction is prison only, the optimal prison term should also be maximal. Intuitively, expected costs can be lowered by increasing the prison term and lowering the probability of apprehension proportionally (thereby holding deterrence fixed) because the punishment, although costly, is imposed less often. In terms of actual punishment policy, however, it is clear that fines and prison terms are not set at their maximal levels for most crimes. In this sense, the model is not descriptive of actual legal practice.
Second, the BPS model predicts that imprisonment should only be used after fines have been used up to the maximum extent possible (for example, up to the offender’s wealth), and only then if additional deterrence is cost-justified. Again, the logic is clear: fines are costless to increase while prison is costly, so it is optimal to exhaust the costless form of punishment first. Actual punishment policies also fail to implement this prescription as offenders are often sentenced to prison when they could have afforded a substantially higher fine. (Think of white-collar criminals.)
The reason for both of these divergences of practice from theory is almost certainly due to the importance of norms besides efficiency, such as fairness or equal treatment, that society deems relevant for the determination of optimal criminal punishment.18 For example, the idea of sentencing poor defendants to lengthier prison terms than wealthy defendants for the same crime would strike many as unacceptable (if not unconstitutional) because it would appear that the wealthy were being allowed to buy their way out of prison (Lott, 1987). Society therefore apparently tolerates a costlier punishment policy for the sake of more equal treatment of offenders.
2.5 Law and Economics
The preceding section focused on economic models in which law was the subject matter to be explained. This section turns to a somewhat different approach to modeling law in which economic theory is used to understand how law and markets interact as (p. 19) alternative social institutions for coordinating human behavior. Economists for the most part take for granted the role of the law in creating a stable background for markets in the same way that they take preferences and technology as given. But law and economics scholars have shown that important insights can be gained about the operation of markets by explicitly recognizing the interrelationship between markets and law. The starting point for such an examination is the Coase Theorem (Coase, 1960).
Economic Models of Law
2.5.1 The Coase Theorem
Coase’s original motivation in writing his seminal paper on externalities was to offer a critique of the Pigovian view, which asserted that some form of government intervention (taxes, fines, or liability) was required to internalize external harm, such as that caused by straying cattle or railroad sparks. Absent such intervention, the Pigovian view maintained, the “cause” of the harm (the rancher or the railroad) would over-engage in the harmful activity. Coase challenged this view by first noting that causation is reciprocal in the sense that both the injurer and victim must be present for an accident to occur. The designation of one party as the “injurer” is therefore arbitrary and in fact represents an implicit awarding of the right to be free from harm to the other party (the “victim”). Thus, for example, under the traditional Pigovian view, the farmer has the right to be free from crop damage—whether from straying cattle or spewing sparks—and so the rancher or the railroad should be compelled to pay the farmer’s cost. But suppose the farmer-victim is in a better position to avoid the harm, say by moving his crops or not locating near the railroad or ranch in the first place. In that case, the designation of the rancher/railroad as the injurer may actually preclude the identification of more efficient ways of avoiding the harm.
Coase’s point in raising the causation issue was to evaluate the conditions under which court-imposed liability is needed to internalize the external harm. Suppose, for example, that in the rancher–farmer dispute the court does not intervene to assign liability to the rancher. Does that necessarily mean that the rancher’s herd will expand inefficiently? The answer, of course, is no, provided that the parties can bargain, because if bargaining is possible, the farmer would be able to bribe the rancher to reduce the herd to the point where the marginal benefit from the last cow equals the marginal cost. In this case, property rights in straying cattle effectively belong to the rancher, and the farmer has to “purchase” them, which he will do up to the point where the two parties value the last cow equally. Note that this is the reverse of what happens under the Pigovian solution, where the farmer is (implicitly) awarded rights to the straying cattle and the rancher has to purchase them by paying the court-imposed damages. In both cases, however, the outcome will be efficient. This conclusion—that the initial assignment of property rights does not affect the final distribution of resources, which is efficient—is the Coase Theorem.
The importance of the Coase Theorem, however, lies not so much in its practical relevance, but in its highlighting of the role of bargaining costs. When the conditions for the Coase Theorem are satisfied—that is, when bargaining is possible—the assignment (p. 20) of liability for external harms does not affect efficiency because the parties will rearrange any initial assignment of rights to the point where the gains from trade are exhausted. In this sense, the law does not matter for efficiency (though it does affect the distribution of wealth).19 When bargaining is not possible, in contrast, the law does matter because the parties will not be able to rearrange inefficient assignments of rights. As a result, the law must be designed with the explicit goal of efficiency in mind. In this way, the Coase Theorem defines the efficient scope for legal intervention (Demsetz, 1972). The
next section elaborates on this idea in the context of the choice between property rules and liability rules.
2.5.2 Property Rules vs. Liability Rules
The classic paper byCalabresi and Melamed (1972)addresses the manner in which rights or entitlements, once assigned, are legally protected and transferred. They distinguished between property rules, under which an entitlement can only be transferred if the holder of the entitlement consents; and liability rules, under which a party seeking to acquire an entitlement can do so without the holder’s consent provided that he or she is willing to pay compensation for the holder’s loss.20 Property rules therefore form the basis for market (voluntary) exchange, while liability rules form the basis for legal (forced) exchange. Because market exchange is consensual, it ensures a mutual benefit, or the realization of gains from trade. The role of the law in such transactions is limited to the enforcement of property rights and contractual exchange of entitlements. In other words, law is complementary to markets in promoting the efficient allocation of resources. In the case of liability rules, on the other hand, the law takes the primary role of forcing an exchange of the entitlement on terms dictated by the court. Here, the law is a substitute for market exchange in organizing the transfer of entitlements because bargaining costs preclude voluntary transfers.
The choice between market and legal exchange depends on the trade-off between the transaction costs associated with bargaining over the price, and errors by the court in setting the price. To use one of Coase’s examples, suppose that farmers situated along a railroad track have the legal right to be free from crop damages caused by sparks, and that right is protected by a property rule. The railroad would then have to secure the (p. 21) agreement of all farmers in order to run trains along a given route, a prospect that would likely prevent any trains from ever running due to high bargaining costs. If the farmers’ rights were instead protected by a liability rule that only required the railroad to compensate farmers for any damages but did not allow the farmers to prevent trains from running, the railroad would internalize the harm through the assessment of liability for damages, and it would run the efficient number of trains. This arrangement, however, places a heavy burden on the court to measure the damages suffered by victims accurately. If it underestimates the damages, the railroad will run too many trains, and if it overestimates damages, the railroad will run too few.
2.5.3 The General Transaction Structure
The choice between property rules and liability rules as just described delineates the scope of markets versus law in achieving an efficient allocation of resources. The resulting framework has been characterized as the General Transaction Structure (GTS) for organizing exchange.21 Figure2.1, which is adapted fromColeman (1988, p. 31), summarizes the framework in the context of the rancher–farmer dispute. The rows represent the party to whom the entitlement is initially assigned (the “winner” of the legal dispute), and the columns represent the rule used to protect that assignment. Cells I and II represent
cases won by the farmer, and cells III and IV represent cases won by the rancher. In the cases won by the farmer, protection by a property rule (cell I) means that the rancher can only infringe on the farmer’s right to be free from straying cattle by bargaining. The farmer can therefore prevent any infringements by obtaining an injunction against trespass. In contrast, when the farmer’s right is protected by a liability rule (cell II), the farmer cannot prevent straying cattle but can only seek compensation for the resulting damages. Note that this latter outcome coincides with the Pigovian view of externalities first critiqued by Coase. As the GTS reveals, however, this is only one out of four possible resolutions of the dispute, and it is only desirable when transaction costs preclude bargaining between the rancher and the farmer.
In cases won by the rancher, protection by a property rule (cell III) means that the rancher is free to let his cattle stray without penalty. As the above discussion revealed, however, this does not necessarily imply that there will be too much crop damage because, as Coase recognized, if the value of lost crops to the farmer exceeds the value of additional cows to the rancher, the farmer can bribe the rancher to reduce his herd, provided that transaction costs are low enough. When the rancher’s right is protected by a liability rule, in contrast (cell IV), the farmer can go to court to obtain a reduction in straying cattle, but he must be willing to pay the resulting loss in profits to the rancher.22 (p. 22) As with cell II, no bargaining between the parties is required here, but the court must calculate the value of additional cows to the rancher.
Notice that the four possible outcomes in Figure2.1provide courts with discretion over both the distributional effects of legal rules, and the manner in which they can be transferred. The choice of which party receives the initial right (the winner) has distributional implications because it determines the assignment of a valuable entitlement. As to the enforcement rule, that has efficiency implications because it determines the manner in which any transfers away from the initial assignment can occur, whether by market exchange if transaction costs are low, or by legal exchange if they are high. In other words, the enforcement rule determines whether entitlements can be exchanged by markets or legal transfers.
Figure 2.1 The General Transaction Structure.
2.5.4 Criminal Law Again
I conclude the discussion of the GTS by suggesting how it can be extended to incorporate criminal law. Although the economic analysis of crime has long been a subfield of law and economics, an interesting question in the positive theory of law is why a separate category of “crimes” is needed.23 After all, both criminal and tort law are concerned with internalizing unwanted harms, so one might ask why tort law alone is not sufficient. It is not an adequate answer to simply say that crimes are intentional and torts are accidental because the economic model of tort law as outlined above can easily accommodate intent (see, for example,Landes and Posner, 1987, ch. 6). Economists thus seek a deeper reason.
One interesting perspective suggested byCalabresi and Melamed (1972)is that criminal law is needed to enforce the GTS.24 Consider, for example, a thief who steals someone else’s property—that is, an entitlement protected by a property rule. When the thief is caught, why not simply make him pay the victim the value of the stolen property? (p. 23) If the thief values the property more than the owner, this “transaction” would produce an “efficient theft,” which seems no different than a court’s imposition of liability on sparkspewing railroads or other injurers. In other words, once we accept the validity of coercive exchanges as efficient in those contexts, why should we not be prepared to accept them in all such cases of forced exchange? What makes the act that we call “theft” different from the other involuntary transfers of entitlements that are allowed within the GTS? The question turns out to be a difficult one that is sidestepped by the BPS model of crime, which simply takes the existence of the criminal category as given and proceeds to derive the optimal enforcement policy.
One answer to this paradox is to recall the reason why liability rules are not universally allowed as the basis for exchange under the GTS. Liability rules require courts to estimate the value of the entitlement to the owner after the fact, which means that there is no guarantee that the resulting exchange is efficient. In contrast, property rules ensure that only efficient exchanges occur because the owner has the right to refuse the transaction. This is why property rules are preferred when transaction costs are low. But what happens if a thief violates an owner’s property rule by stealing the protected item? If the legal remedy is simply to require the thief to pay compensation, then he has succeeded in transforming the property rule into a liability rule. To prevent this, some further sanction (or “kicker”) is needed to discourage the thief from violating the GTS in the first place; that is, from bypassing the market. This enhanced sanction represents the criminal penalty.
If the logic of this argument makes sense in the context of property transfers, it becomes even more compelling when applied to bodily harm or other violent acts, where court efforts to estimate the dollar cost to victims are bound to be inadequate (or impossible). In these cases, criminal sanctions are meant to discourage exchanges that should never happen at all—those that are protected by “inalienability rules.” The specific form of the criminal sanction, whether a fine, imprisonment, or some combination, is not important.
What is important is that the sanction in question is intended as a punishment for an illegitimate transaction, as opposed to compensation for a legitimate transaction (Cooter, 1984). It is this punitive aspect of criminal law that distinguishes it from tort law and thereby offers a resolution of the paradox of “efficient theft.”25
2.6
Some Thoughts on Model Building
I conclude this chapter with some practical comments on the process of building economic models of law. The comments are based onVarian (1998)as well as my own (p. 24) experience, as an economist with no formal legal training, in building economic models of law over the past 25 years.
Above all, the process of building good economic models, in law or any field, involves asking interesting questions and using the right methods to answer them. The first problem is therefore to find a good question. The law is an ideal subject area for finding interesting economic questions for several reasons: first, both law and economics presume rational decision-makers; second, both areas involve the use of incentives; and third, both are concerned with trade-offs. Still, some legal issues are more interesting and relevant than others, and good scholars are more adept at finding the interesting ones. The best questions are those that generalize to circumstances beyond the particular case at hand, or even the particular area of law. (The model of precaution is a good example.) The good news for young scholars is that formal legal training is not generally necessary to find good questions because most areas of law concern issues and disputes that arise in ordinary experience. Indeed, interesting questions can often be found by simply reading newspapers or paying attention to current events. Although detailed legal knowledge will eventually be necessary for purposes of interpreting the result of one’s model in light of the law—either to describe existing rules or to propose better ones—it is usually not difficult to learn the relevant law in an ad hoc manner.
As emphasized above, the use of economic models to understand the law requires acceptance of rationality on the part of the key decision-makers, which is the basis of most economic analysis. Even if one eschews efficiency as the sole objective of the law, rationality of agents is necessary if one wants to employ standard optimization models. The next decision involves the choice of the assumptions, which, as discussed above, serve to limit the scope of the inquiry at hand. Although the ultimate goal is to derive general conclusions, it is best to start out with the simplest setting that captures the essence of the problem of interest. This allows one to isolate the key elements of the model and to understand what drives it. It is a common mistake of young scholars to generalize a model too soon under the belief that the simple version lacks realism or relevance, but this approach quickly leads to an overly complex model that is either intractable or yields no clear results. Only after understanding a simple version of the model (probably too simple), does it make sense to generalize it by relaxing some of the assumptions and adding additional elements.
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Hilu tekee työtä niin pitkälle kuin jaksaa, lepää vain sen, mikä välttämätöntä on, ja jatkaa sitten taas. Alussa tuntuu jäsenissä hiukan pakotusta, työn päätyttyä ne joskus tuntuvat lopen puutuneilta, mutta se johtuu vain tottumattomuudesta. Jonkun ajan kuluttua käy kaikki kuin itsestään, hän ei huomaa, kuinka aika kuluu ja kun hän sen viimein huomaa, ei hän malta lopettaa. Se on nyt sellaista.
Vähitellen, hän ei huomaa itsekään kuinka, valtaa hänet samanlainen into kuin silloin kerran Mäntyniemen raiviomaalla. Innostuksen tunteessa on nyt kuitenkin se ero, että se tällä kertaa on selvempää, tyynempää ja määrätietoisempaa. Tähän intoon liittyy ohut annos pelkoakin jonkun seikan väliintulemisesta ja siitä, että jokin nyt voisi lopettaa kaikki kun juuri ollaan päästy käsiksi. Mutta se tunne väistyy kuitenkin kaikkivoittavan innon edestä, ja yhä navakammin iskee kirves puun kylkeen.
- On se kruunu sentään… ajattelee Hilu, - antaa köyhälle pirullekin tilaisuuden tällaiseen…
Niin, onhan se kruunu ja on aina ollut. Yhdenveroisia, sanottakoonpa mitä tahansa, ovat sen edessä herrat ja jätkät, työmiehet ja asessoorit, poliisit ja kruununvoudit. Ja puulaakitkin. Tietenkin ne herrat krateerailevat ihmiset oman mielensä mukaan ja hyvinkin kohtelevat eri tavalla herroja, talonpoikaa ja työmiehiä, mutta ne nyt ovat vain herroja. Mutta kun oikein kruunun eteen joudutaan, niin saman arvoisiapa ollaan, siitä ei päästä yli eikä ympäri.
Rippikouluajoista Hilu muistaa, että kaikki valta on lähtöisin Jumalasta.
— Jumalasta, Jumalastapa hyvinkin, päättää hän sydämen vakaumuksella ja hartaudella. - Ei toisin voisi ollakaan, tietenkään. Ja Jumala on antanut osan maallista valtaansa keisarille ja keisari taas on luovuttanut valtaansa, mitä metsiin tulee, metsäherralle ja metsäherra osaltaan metsänvartijalle. Onhan se metsänvartijakin olevinaan joku herra, mutta tuskin se tosiasiallisesti on puulaakin kymppiä kummempi eikä ainakaan ukkoherraa parempi…
Ja hän, Hilu siis on keisarin maalla ja keisarin metsässä perustamassa uutistaloa. Tietää hän keisarin, on kuvissa monastikin nähnyt. Sellainen vähän pujopartainen, hiukan pystynokkainen mies. Iho kuin samettia ja muutenkin mies mukavan näköinen. Mitähän sanoneekaan kun paperit näkee, jos nuo nyt sinne asti menevät. Majesteetti…
Hilu pyyhkii hikeä otsaltaan, huoahtaa hetkisen ja siirtyy seuraavan puun juurelle.
Niin, ja nyt sitä ollaan yhdessä Iinan kanssa. Iinalla on kyllä lapsi jonkun rakennusmestarin kanssa, mutta se nyt on sen lapsenkin
kohta niinkuin se on. Alkujaankaan ei ole syytä Iinaa moittia ja sitäpaitsi se asia on jo niin moneen kertaan sovittu. Oli syytä hänessäkin, Hilussa, ja mikä tietää, vaikka hänestäkin olisi siinnyt lapsi jonnekin… Mutta mitäpäs näitä, turhaan tulevat mieleen. Ollaan nyt tässä, mihin ollaan pyrittykin. Siellä, kotona, Keinuvaaran kupeella, on Iina. Aurinko paistaa tällä hetkellä suoraan ikkunoista sisään ja pölyhiutaleet leijailevat valojuovissa. Iina odottaa häntä kotiin myöhään lauantai-iltana, saattaa siksi tehdä juustonkin. Heittäydytään levolle yhdessä… Ja kun heille lapsiakin tulee, niin ei Kalle sen huonommalle osalle joudu. Ei tahdo aina muistaakaan, ettei se ole omia, on päässyt siitä pitämäänkin niin… No, joko se taas!
Kun ihmiset kyläpaikoissa ovat jo aikoja sitten menneet levolle kaikuvat Hilun kirveen iskut vielä autiossa erämaassa, saavuttavat vaaran seinämän, ponnahtavat takaisin ja kantautuvat moninkertaisena kaikuna huokailevaan, varjottomaan yöhön.
* * * * *
Muutamana päivänä Hilun työ äkkiä keskeytyy.
— No, mies! Mitäs sinä jyystät?
Hilu nostaa katseensa. Hänen edessään seisoo lihavahko mies, punanokkainen, sänkipartainen, ja miehen takana laukunkantaja ja muuan toinen mies. Mitä lienevät ohikulkijoita.
— Päivää, vastaa Hilu. — Talon tapaistahan tässä koetetaan rustata.
— Vai talontapaista!
Mies naurahtaa eikä näytä lainkaan ystävälliseltä. Saattaa olla joku yhtiön herroista.
— Entä kenen luvalla? Hilu suutahtaa.
— Ei kenenkään maantienkulkijan luvalla, vastaa hän tiuskaisemalla. — Eikä ainakaan teidän luvallanne.
Vastaus näyttää hiukan ällistyttävän puhujaa ja hän miettii hetken, mutta kokoaa sitten koko mahtipontisuutensa.
— Kyllä sen kuulee, että entinen jätkä on puhuttelemassa ihmisiä, hän sanoo sitten levollisesti. — Mutta sitä ei pidä mennä peukaloimaan yhtiön lanssimaita.
Hilu tarttuu kirveeseensä.
— Se on vale.
— Se on totta, vastaa vieras. - Ja paras, että lopetat tähän paikkaan.
Veri nousee Hilun päähän ja viha taistelee ällistyksen ja nousevan epätoivon kanssa. Tähänkö sen nyt sitten piti loppua!
— Lupa on paremmasta paikasta, sanoo hän näennäisesti rauhassa. - Eikä työtä jokaisen kulkijan käskystä lopeteta.
— No lähde kysymään metsäherralta.
Nyt Hilu jo saa naurahtaa. Jos vain siitä on kysymys, niin lähdetään vain Mutta synti on heittää työtä kesken, sillä nyt on vasta tiistai. Tulee melkein päivän tappio.
— Kyllä se asia on jo sovittu, naurahtaa hän tyyntyneenä. - Jos metsäherra tahtoo kieltää, niin kyllä hän lähettää sanan kun ilmoitatte.
Mutta samalla hän ajattelee, että jos tässä sittenkin on koira haudattuna ja epäilyksen aavistus täyttää hänen mielensä. Saattaa tuolla toisella sittenkin olla jotakin pontta puheilleen tai sitten on hän erehtynyt paikasta.
— Saatan minä teidän kanssanne lähteä metsäherrallekin, jatkaa Hilu mietittyään, - mutta sillä ehdolla, että maksatte ajan hukan, jos olette väärässä.
— Olkoon niin sitten.
— Se on sitten sata markkaa.
— Vaikkapa!
— Kuulkaa tarkasti, vieraat miehet, sanoo Hilu herran takana seisoville miehille. Ei häntä vain niin juoksuteta.
Hilu oli huomannut, että ihmisten luonteenomainen korskeus, pöyhkeys ja itserakkaus väheni sitä mukaa kuta lähemmäksi he tulivat metsäherran puustellia ja kun he viimein astelivat verkalleen portaita ylös, olivat he nöyriä poikia. Mutta kauhukseen hän pani merkille, että tämän herran luonto ei ottanut laskeakseen edes sittenkään kun portti oli auennut, vaan käski vielä miehensäkin sisään. Jospa sittenkin… Ajatus väristytti Hilua.
Metsäherran työhuone on varjon puolella, mutta huonekalujen kiiltävät pinnat välkähtelevät. Viipyy aikoja ennenkuin metsäherra tulee näkyviin.
— Keitä te olette?
Metsäherran katse pysähtyy ensin mieheen, jota Hilu luulee yhtiön herraksi, viivähtää sitten molemmissa seuralaisissa ja pysähtyy oven suussa seisovaan Hiluun.
— Kankkunen istuu, hän sanoo Hilulle.
Mies alkaa selittää asiaansa. Hän on yhtiön päälliköitä ja on tavannut tämän Kankkusen kaatamassa puita yhtiön lanssimaalla.
— Mitä asiaa näillä toisilla on? kysäisee metsäherra vastaamatta yhtiön herralle vielä mitään.
— Me olemme vain tämän Kotkasen, tämän ukkoherran, saattomiehiä…
— Vai niin. Sittenhän teillä ei ole täällä mitään tekemistä.
Se oli niin metsäherran-paroonin tapaista. Ei olla tekemisissä ihmisten kanssa muissa kuin asioissa. Mutta ukkoherran kasvot lensivät tulipunaisiksi. Ei nyt taidettu tulla oikealle asialle.
— Jaha, lanssimaa, sanoi metsäherra sitten kääntyen yhtiön miehen puoleen. — Mihin te tahdotte tulla?
Yhtiön herra koettaa selvittää asiaansa. Hän on tavannut tämän Kankkusen kaatamassa puita paikalla, jonka yhtiö on katsonut lanssimaakseen. Yhtiö kai se sittenkin on suurin metsänostaja näillä main.
— Ensinnäkään teillä ei ole mitään lanssimaata Liinahatun tienoilla, vastaa metsäherra vähän ajan kuluttua. - Toiseksi ei
Liinahatun vartiopiiristä ainakaan viiteen vuoteen myydä runkoakaan, joten on hyvin epävarmaa, tuletteko siellä koskaan mitään lanssimaata tarvitsemaankaan. Ja kolmanneksi minä tulen kyllä neuvomaan tai neuvottamaan teille lanssimaan, kun te sitä tarvitsette.
Yhtiön herra hikoili. Tällaiseksi hän ei ollut metsäherraa kuvitellut.
— Minä olen sieltä kulkenut katselemassa metsää, hän vastasi, oston varalta. Ja minä ajattelin, että juuri siinä oli kaikkein parhaimpia lanssimaita…
— Vai niin, sanoi metsäherra ilmeisen ylenkatseellisesti. - Vai te ajattelitte, jaha. Ja sitten te juoksutatte tätä Kankkusta peninkulmittain juuri silloin kun aika on tärkeintä. Se on kaunista ja yhtiönne tapaista.
— Hän lupasi minulle sata markkaa, jos häviää, kiiruhti Hilu lisäämään.
— Olkaa hyvä ja maksakaa, lopetti metsäherra, - ja menkää sitten tiehenne. Mutta Kankkunen tekee hyvin ja jää vähäksi ajaksi.
Yhtiön herran oli nuopean näköinen ja Hilun tuli häntä melkein sääli.
— Kyllä se puolikin sentään riittää, sanoi hän nähdessään edessään sileän satamarkkasen.
— Antakaa olla vain, huomautti metsäherra kuivasti. — Ottakoon yhtiöltä takaisin.
Ja Hilu otti satamarkkasen, jonka ansaitsemiseen häneltä tukkijoella olisi mennyt kolme viikkoa ellei ylikin. Eihän hän muutakaan voinut, kun kerran metsäherran oli käsky. Kumma mies tuo metsäherra, tavalliselle ihmiselle ei tehnyt hyvää ellei pahaakaan, mutta yhtiötä kohtaan oli kuin paholainen.
— Kai Kankkunen on hakannut osoitusteni mukaan? kysyi metsäherra yhtiön miehen mentyä.
— Kyllähän minä olen koettanut.
— Hyvä on.
Metsäherra istui pöydän ääressä ja Hilu luuli, että hän katseli häntä, mutta kun hän nosti silmänsä, huomasikin hän, että metsäherra katseli ilmeettömin silmin ikkunasta ulos.
— Ja työt sujuvat hyvin, luonnollisesti? Kysymys tuli pitkän ajan kuluttua ja aivan kuin ohimennen. Metsäherra nähtävästi ajatteli muita asioita, ja Hilu odotti jännityksellä.
— Hyvinhän ne tietenkin menevät, myönsi hän.
— Rakennuksiin olisi pian päästävä, jatkoi metsäherra taas pitkän tovin kuluttua.
Sitten hän nousi ja käveli muutaman kerran edestakaisin, pistäytyi välillä toisessa huoneessa ja tuli taas takaisin.
— On paras, että Kankkunen laittaa hakemuspaperinsa kuntoon jo tänään, sanoi hän melkein vilkkaasti ja katseli Hilua koko ajan kiinteästi silmiin. — Hankitte tarpeelliset todistukset
varallisuudestanne ynnä muusta ja lähetätte sitten nimismiehen kautta kuvernöörille.
— Nytkö jo tänään?
— Nyt. Kankkus-Hilu teki lähtöä.
— Voi käydä niin, jatkoi metsäherra hiukan empien, että yhtiö muuten haetuttaa jollakin juipillaan ellei samalle paikalle, niin ainakin niille seuduin uutistalon ja siitä on sitten kaikenlaista ikävyyttä. Niin että Kankkunen on hyvä ja toimii nopeasti nyt. Saatte ehkä syksyksi katselmuksen.
Hilu sai mennä ja hän riensi sydän pamppaillen portaita alas. Vai ovat asiat niin täpärällä. Hilu ei nimittäin tiennyt, että joskus oli tapahtunut sellaistakin, että yhtiö oli jollakin jätkällään haetuttanut uutistalon, auttanut kaikin puolin sen asianmukaiseen kuntoon saamisessa niin että se mahdollisimman pian tuli perinnöksi ja sukeltautui sitten metsään. Mutta metsäherra, hän oli kyllä tietoinen konstista jos toisestakin, vaikka hän enimmäkseen piti suunsa kiinni.
Nyt sattuu niin, että Erkkilän Juhani, kunnallislautakunnan esimies, on päissään, kun Hilu tulee häneltä pyytämään todistusta siitä, että hän on "varoistaan elävä ja työllään hyvin toimeentuleva". Miehet ovat hiljakkoin olleet käymässä Knjäsöissä, tuoneet tuomisia tullessaan, ja Erkkilän Juhani on tehnyt itselleen useita puolikuppisia
Venäjän pirtusta, siitä sinileimaisesta. Pari miestä, toinen Erkkilän renki, on tuupertunut aidan viereen ja he makaavat naamat punoittavina ja suu auki auringon helteessä. Näky hiukan ellottaa Hilua eikä hän saata olla ajattelematta, että hän on tullut vähän sopimattomaan aikaan.
Erkkilän Juhanilla on kaverina Könkään Sanhriiti ja hän istuu kamarissaan ja tavailee kirjoitusta pullon kyljestä.
— On se ainetta tuokin, hän puhuu ja vetää pullon lähemmäksi silmiään, — on se… Katsoppas, ei sitä sopisi näin kunnan miesten, mutta piruakos… Mitä se oiken tuo kirjoitus tuossa kyljessä?
— Kazjonnij spirt, vastaa Sanhriiti ponnekkaasti ja mojovasti, sillä hän on ollut joskus hommissa Kuolassa. -Se merkitsee, että valtion
pirtu. Katsos, se ryssä, ymmärräthän, kyllä se tietää, millä rahat omaan taskuun kierii.
— Ymmärtää. Jaha, että valtion viinaa. No on se…
Erkkilän Juhani katselee viheriälasista pulloa syvällä hartaudella ja kääntyy sitten Hilun puoleen.
— Niin, että mistäpä minä sinun varallisuutesi ja työkykysi tiedän.
— Enhän minä ole ollut kunnan vastuksina enkä paljon muidenkaan, huomauttaa Hilu.
— Et, se on totta… Korkkikin niin mukavasti laitettu, ettei muuta kuin vähän pullon pyrstöön kämmenpohjaan tömähdyttää, niin lentää kuin limlaatipullosta. Eikö se samppaniia ole samanlaista?
— On, vakuuttaa Sanhriiti, vaan ei siinä väkevyyttä ole, tai kyllä sitä on, mutta se on sellaista salaista. Särvit kuin limlaatia ja yhtäkkiä olet petleheemissä.
— Vai petleheemissä… kas pirulaista. Mutta otahan vähän sinäkin, Kankkus-Hilu.
— En minä tällä kertaa, tokaisee Hilu kärsimättömästi. - Puhutaan jo taas siitäkin todistuksesta.
— Puhutaan, myöntää esimies ja koettaa olla asiallisen näköinen.
Sitten hän kääntyy Könkään Sanhriitin puoleen.
— Mitä minä teen? hän kysyy
— Se on sinun asiasi. Mikäs tietäjä minä olen.
— Etpä tietenkään. Kysynkin sinulta vain vähän niinkuin esimiehenä.
Hyvää neuvoa, ettäs älyät. Minulla on niin herkkä omatunto.
Hilu istuu kuin tulisilla hiilillä. Tuleekohan tästä koko päivänä mitään.
— Herkkä omatunto, jatkaa Erkkilän Juhani odottamatta vastausta. Se tulee viran mukana. Jolle Herra viran antaa, sille hän antaa myös viisautta…
— Joo, niin se on, vahvistaa Sanhriiti. - Koetahan nyt harkita, meinaan omantunnon mukaan ja laajaperäisesti, tätä Hilemooni Kankkusen edesottamista. Sillä on vähän kiire, näyttää.
— Kiire, muttei niin kiire, ettei virkakunta ehtisi suorittamaan tehtäviään. Harkitaan.
Hilua alkoi yhä enemmän kyllästyttää ja hermostuttaa, mutta sitä ei saanut näyttää. Erkkilän Juhani oli sen suunnan miehiä, että otti pian nokastuakseen ja sitten hänen kanssaan ei tullut toimeen kukaan.
— Pitäisi vähän kylältäkin tiedustella, sanoi hän, tehden puolikuppisen, olen niin vähän sinua seurannut.
Tähän ei Hilulla ollut mitään sanottavaa. Mutta aika kului ja kului.
— Kyllähän te minut tiedätte, yritti hän. - Ei ole koskaan tarvinnut…
— Ei ole tarvinnut, ei. Mutta jos taloon joudut, piru tiennee, vaikka tarvitsisikin. Joo, se on sillä tavalla, Kankkus-poika. Pitää olla kaukonäköinen. Tule huomenna.
— Ei passaa. Metsäherra sanoi, että tänään pitää.
— Sanoiko herra hosmestari ja paruuni…
— Kyllä se sanoi.
Erkkilän Juhanin vahvimpia puolia ei ollut erikoinen kunnioitus virkamiessäätyä kohtaan, mutta tämä metsäherra oli pitänyt itsensä niin kaukana ja korkealla, että se oli väkevästi vaikuttanut esimieheenkin. Hän ikäänkuin selveni ja koetti harkita, mitä metsäherra kiiruhtamisellaan tarkoitti. Lopuksi hän jo kysäisi:
— No mitäs herra hosmestari meinaa?
— Mitäs se, selvässä asiassa.
Könkään Sanhriitikin alkoi jo sekaantua asiaan.
— Mitäs, sanoi hän Erkkilälle, annat plakaatin. Oikealle miehelle se tulee.
— Pappilaankin pitäisi vielä tänä iltana ennättää, ehätti Hilu vähän innostuen. — Ja sitten vielä nimismiehelle.
— No, annahan nyt, kun minä mietin. Eihän sitä tällaisessa tilanteessa kuin räkkäporo… Haes kynää ja paperia, Sanhriiti, ne ovat tuossa kaapin päällä.
Erkkilän Juhani iski silmää viekkaasti ja kieli pyrki lallattelemaan, vaikkeivät ajatukset tahtoneet pysyä koossa. Hilun mieliala paranee,
mutta samalla hänen mieleensä muistuvat monet lapsuudenaikaiset kohtaukset kankaan takaa ja myöhemminkin. Tällaistahan se on, kun ollaan päissään.
— Hyvä mieshän se Hilemooni on ollut, sanoo esimies, saatuaan kirjoitus vehkeet. - Kirjoltahan sinä, Sanhriiti, joka olet siihen parempi. Minä sitten vain pistän nimeni alle kuin kuvernööri.
— Mitä minä siihen kirjoitan?
Hilun olo käy jännittäväksi. Erkkilän Juhani on tärkeän näköinen ja miettii.
— Ei sitä pitäisi näin piiput hampaissa, sanoo hän vihdoin, - mutta menköön nyt tämä kerta. Autetaanpas Hilua korvilleen, vähän niinkuin säätyyn, kun et sitten vaan kunnan niskoille… pirkele…
— Mitäs minä, melkein yksinäinen mies.
— Niin ne kaikki sanovat. Sanoi Kieringin Mattikin. Vähän jyrkkä askel…
— Kyllähän se sitä on, myöntää Hilu antaumuksella.
— Mitäs se muuta on. No, kirjoltahan, Sanhriiti, niinkuin pruukataan. Kirjoita että työllään hyvin toimeentuleva ja varoistaan erinomaisesti elävä…
— Erinomaisesti? kysyy Sanhriiti keskeyttäen puuhansa. — Onko se nyt laillista?
— Eiköhän se ole liikaa sanottu? kysyy Hilukin.
— Anna olla, että erinomaisesti. Sittenpähän näkevät herrat ja kuvernööritkin. Ja soman kajahduksen se antaa. Autetaanhan nyt Hilemoonia…
— Sama minulle, sanoo Könkään Sanhriiti ja kirjoittaa todistuksen loppuun. - Alappas piirrellä nimeäsi.
Erkkilän Juhani tarttuu tarmokkaasti kynään ja piirtää nimensä alle. Sitten hän aikoo lyödä kunnallislautakunnan sinetin alle, mutta värityynystä on väri poissa ja uutta ei ole saatavissa.
— Kaadahan vähän pirtua tyynylle, Sanhriiti.
— Auttaisikohan tuo. Jos rupeaa koko todistus haisemaan pirtulle.
— Anna haista. Kyllä se tekee hyvää herrain nokkaan. Minä kaadan itse, koskei sinussa ole miestä…
Väripula tulee autetuksi ja kunnallislautakunnan sinetti ilmestyy koristamaan Erkkilän Juhanin painavaa nimikirjoitusta.
— No siinä on sitten sellainen paperi, että talo lähtee vaikka olisi keisarin pörssissä, kehuu Erkkilä ojentaessaan paperin Hilulle. - Eikä maksa mitään. Paitsi ryypyt, jos tahdot asian kunniaksi Sanhriitin ja minun kanssa…
— Eiköhän se jo meille riitä, väittää Könkään Sanhriiti.
— Mitä kanssa! Nyt se vasta alkaa, kun ei ole noita virkatoimiakaan.
— Kyllähän minä kernaasti, myöntää Hilu kiitollisena, — mutta kun ei tahdo olla aikaa.
— Sepä, mutta käy tuolta pihalta hakemassa pullo. Kyllä me tämän
Sanhriitin kanssa…
Hilu epäröi, mutta menee pian. Onhan hän senverran kiitollisuuden velassa. Kun hän palaa takaisin on hänellä pirtupullo kädessä.
— Siinon, äijät.
— Kiitos. Kyllä sinusta rento isäntä tulee. Ja sitten kun pirttirehtosi on valmis, tulemme me tämän Sanhriitin kanssa ryypylle kuin vertaisiin. Eikö niin.
— No niin. Tervetuloa!
— Joo, niinkuin vertaisiin tullaan. Joskus talvella. Mutta tästäkään et puhu kenellekään.
— En. Hyvästi nyt.
— No, hyvästi nyt sitten ja voi hyvin. Joko sinä ajattelet syyniä eli katselmusta, niinkuin sanotaan, tänä vuonna?
— Kyllä kai.
— Menehän nyt sitten. Kyllä talo irtausi. Kevein mielin astelee Hilu pappilaa kohden.
Onpahan taas tehty yksi tärkeä askel. Ei siitä puulaakin herran häiriöstä lopuksikaan ollut muuta kuin hyvää. Mutta sitten hän alkaa ajatella, että mahtoikohan se viinan osto sittenkään olla otollista. Ei hän sen asian vuoksi eikä rahamenon vuoksikaan, eihän siihen
mennyt kuin kahdeksan markkaa… Mutta jos syrjäläinen tiesi, niin lahjukseksi käsitti. Saattoi sanoa, että viinan voimalla se Kankkusen Hilukin… Vaikkeihän siitä aikaisemmin mitään puhetta ollut. Päissään olivat muutenkin, varsinkin Erkkilän Juhani, joka harvoin kuului maistelevan. Mutta eipähän hän omasta aloitteestaan, itse olivat esittäneet, eikä hän iljennyt vastaankaan panna. Hilusta tuntuu kuin olisi hän jossakin suhteessa tullut entistä herkemmäksi. Siinä viinanostojutussa hän teki väärin, se ajatus ei jätä häntä kirkkoherran virkahuoneessakaan.
Muuten Hilun asiat sujuvat tänä iltana hyvin. Kirkkoherra pyytää saada nähdä kunnallislautakunnan esimiehen todistuksen ja sanoo, että hyvänpä se kirjoittikin. Toivottaa vielä onnea ja kättelee, kun Hilu lähtee. Eipä seurakunnalla ole Kankkusesta ollut haittaa, siivo ja työteliäs on ollut.
Nimismies ottaa itse kirjoittaakseen hakemuksen. Kuuluu, sanoo hän, virkaankin. Huomisaamuna lähtee posti ja toimittaa sen siinä menemään. Vai sellainen kiire se nyt tuli. Mikäpäs siinä, metsäherra ne asiat parhaiten ymmärtää. Kyllä talo lähtee, ei siitä puhettakaan, mutta saattaa se joskus lujalle panna…
Se on mukava mies, tämä nykyinen vallesmanni, eikä sellainen kuin se poikanen, joka tässä takavuosina edusti kruunun komentoa, mukava mies ja laatutuumainen mies ja köyhää kansaa kohtaan ymmärtäväinen ja höyli.
Hilu on siis tehnyt tehtävänsä ja päivä alkaa kallistua illaksi. Saattaisi mennä kotonakin käymään, mutta ennättääpä sitten lauantaina. Voisi Iina aluksi säikähtää, että mitä se nyt, keskellä viikkoa… Hetken seisoo Hilu epätietoisena tien käänteessä, mutta kulkee sitten päättäväisesti takaisin metsään. Eikä se johdu mistään
ahneuden hengestä, vaan siitä, että päivät on käytettävä tarkkaan.
Aamusta pitää taas aloittaa.
Syksy tulee näille main aikaisin. Elokuun alkupuolella saattaa jo veden mukana heittäytyä lumensekaista, jonakin aamuhetkenä voi tunturinlaki olla valkeana kuin käärinliina. Maa on kosteana sateesta, kuusikot uhoovat kosteutta, jängät vettyvät ja murheellisina töröttävät harvat ohrakuhilaat laihoilla, pienillä pelloilla. Syksyinen alakuloisuuden leima kantautuu huoneisiinkin. Lattiat kantautuvat täyteen kosteata likaa, ihmiset pysyvät nurkissaan umpimielisinä ja tympeinä.
Ikävänä, sateisena syyspäivänä saapuu insinööri Trampenfelt Keinuvaaran kupeelle parin uskotun miehen kera, astuu tupaan ja tekee hyvän päivän. Sitten hän viskaa lakin penkille, pyyhkii erinomaisen huolellisesti silmälasinsa ja ilmoittaa, että katselmuskokous aloitetaan nyt pian. Kai ovat kuulleet kirkossa luetun kuulutuksen.
Onhan se kuultu.
Iina kantaa insinöörille ja uskotuille miehille kahvia ja insinööri juttelee hauskasti ja mukavasti kaiken maailman asiat. Taitaa tuntua hauskalta päästä joskus itse emännöimään.
— Mahtaako tuo niin varmaa olla, että pääsee, vastaa Iina.
— En minä ainakaan huomaa mitään estettä, sanoo insinööri.
Insinööriä käsketään kamariin, mutta hän sanoo, että kyllähän sitä tässäkin. Kumma, ettei muita ihmisiä saavu, vai jokohan on sallittu katselmuksen mennä vastaanpanijoitta.
— Iso poikakinhan teillä on, huomauttaa insinööri katellen Kallea.
Pian pystyy töihin sekin.
Insinöörin sanat herättävät sekunnin piinallisen ällistyksen. Iina kääntyy takkaan päin salatakseen ilmettään.
— Isohan se on, vastaa viimein Hilu. - Sen nimi on muuten Kalle. Ja pian kai siitä on apuakin.
— Eikä uutta väkeä ole tiedossa. Hilu käy sylkäisemässä takkaan.
— Eipähän ole tällä tiedolla.
Puolen tunnin kuluttua saapuu metsänhoitaja, kättelee insinööriä ja talonväkeä ja istuutuu sitten sanaa puhumatta ikkunan ääreen. Synkät, totiset silmät viipyvät kauan aikaa yhdessä paikassa ja kun hän on juonut kahvinsa, nyökähdyttää hän vain lyhyesti päätään. Viimein insinööri katsoo kelloaan, sanoo jotakin ruotsinkielellä metsäherralle ja metsäherra vastaa puoliääneen samalla kielellä.
— Me kai voimmekin sitten aloittaa toimituksen, sanoo insinööri viimein.
