Law of Tuna

There’s an interesting paper by the University of Pennsylvania’s Eric Feldman called “The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World’s Premier Fish Market.” It talks about the Tokyo fish market where dealing in tuna is highly fractious. Most theorists would say that disputes in a tight industry of repeat players are best handled by informal, private means; however, Feldman shows that the state-made laws that govern the fish market are used very often with great punctilio, all of which works well:

In short, by presenting a detailed case study of a highly specialized court that operates under government auspices, this Article argues that formal state law can outperform informal group norms by satisfying the business needs of close-knit merchants while simultaneously contributing to the shared values that underlie the success of their future transactions.

Incidentally, the link above is to the abstract on SSRN.