36

This paper examines the main characteristics of the consular regime of social control of markets by looking at some aspects of the organization and operation of the Commercial Court of Paris, a four and a half century old institution in which judges are lay, business people. Comparing the pragmatic legal reasoning of the consular judges with Richard Posner’s « experiential pragmatism » or « everyday pragmatism » points to a combination of old forms of institutional capture and new forms of corporatism that increasingly serve as a model for the management of core State functions. This raises the issue of finding news forms of protection of the public interest in a market society.