Celebrating European law and economics: three decades in a long tradition

Abstract This paper analyzes the intellectual foundations and evolution of the European Journal of Law and Economics (EJLE) over its first thirty years. We first reconstruct the European intellectual traditions underlying law and economics—Enlightenment thought, the German Historical School, ordoliberalism, and comparative institutional analysis—and their role in shaping the journal’s founding mission. We then complement this historical analysis with a comprehensive, data-driven study of all EJLE articles published since 1994. Using topic modeling (BERTopic) and abstract-similarity clustering, we document the journal’s thematic structure, its evolution over time, and changes in authorship, collaboration, and geographic composition. The results highlight both continuity and rebalancing within a methodologically plural and institutionally grounded research agenda.