Background
Hamilton, Walton Hale was born on October 30, 1881 in Hiwassee College, Tennessee, United States. Son of Review Hale Snow and Bettie Dixon (Hudgings) Hamilton.
Hamilton, Walton Hale was born on October 30, 1881 in Hiwassee College, Tennessee, United States. Son of Review Hale Snow and Bettie Dixon (Hudgings) Hamilton.
Preparatory education, Webb School, Bellbuckle, Tennessee, 1898-1901. Student Vanderbilt University, 1901-1903. Bachelor of Arts, University Texas, 1907.
Doctor of Philosophy, University Michigan, 1913.
Master of Arts (honorary), Yale, 1928.
Considered a leading figure in the Legal Realism movement at Yale, Hamilton was a vigorous critic of legal formalism and sought to apply the insights of economic studies to the law. Hamilton taught courses in trade regulation, torts, and public control of business. He was a professor of law at the Yale Law School from 1928 to 1948, and was ultimately appointed Southmayd Professor of Law, emeritus.
He argued that legal concepts evolved in specific historical and social contexts and that, when they were removed from their context and generalized into universal legal principles, they led to socially undesirable, often unexpected results.
He developed these arguments in a series of articles in the 1930s, which included: Affectation with a Public Interest (1930), The Ancient Maxim Caveat Emptor (1931), and The Path of Due Process of Law (1938). Hamilton also undertook a series of industry studies that sought to show that wages and prices were not set by market forces as understood by neoclassical economists but instead depended on social and historical contexts, so that the results were noncompetitive wages and prices.
In 1919 Hamilton coined the term "Institutional economics". Hamilton authored the following works, among others:
Current Economic Problems (1915, 1925)
Price and Price Policies (1938)
The Pattern of Competition (1940)
Patents and Free Enterprise (1941)
The Politics of Industry (1951)
He co-authored:
The Control of Wages (1923)
The Case of Bituminous Coal (1925)
A Way of Order for Bituminous Coal (1928)
The Power to Govern (1937)
Antitrust in Action (1940)
Hamilton received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1907 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Michigan in 1913.
He died in Washington, District of Columbia, on October 27, 1958.
Member National Recovery Administration Board, 1934-1935. Member Georgia Barometer; Served on presidential fact-finding board arbitrating Pullman wage dispute.
Married Lucile Elizabeth Rhodes, 1909. Married second, Irene Till, July 20, 1937. Children: Richard Hale, Edward Rhodes, Jean.