In the 1830s, the "new science of law" aimed to explain the working rules of human society by using the methodologically individual terms of economic discourse. Practitioners were inclined to admit altruistic values, bounded rationality, and institutional inertia into their research programs. This positive analysis of law tended to push normative discussions up from the level of specific laws to society's political organization. Late-twentieth-century institutional economics is currently developing greater resemblances to this now-forgotten new science.