Efficiency v. Fairness

We spend a lot of time in law school talking about how efficiency and fairness are at odds. Pretty much everybody has a good idea of why fairness is so great, but what about efficiency? I need to spend a little time with my nose in my old econ textbooks, but what I think I learned in college was this: efficiency drives real economic growth, which leads to broad standard of living increases in the long run. You can do a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul (which is what many economists think much of the law amounts to), but you're just shifting things around while destroying a little wealth while you're at it.

That's not to say that justice doesn't have significant value, but I think justice doesn't have infinite value. It would be more fair if the result of every civil and criminal trial was given a thorough review every five years even after all the parties involved are dead. But the costs would exceed the benefits. It would be more efficient to summarily execute everyone indicted by a grand jury for murder. But the costs would again exceed the benefits.

Another way to put it is that principles, rules, traditions, precedents, and the like have value only insofar as they produce actual tangible benefits to actual human beings.