Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters

David D. Friedman

Princeton University Press, 2000 - Law - 329 pages

What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting.

Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay readers without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars--it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment--but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places--and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well.

This book will undoubtedly raise the discourse on the increasingly important topic of the economics of law, giving both supporters and critics of the economic perspective a place to organize their ideas.

What people are saying

Review: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters

User Review  - Justin - Goodreads

Law's Order was the primary text in my Economic Analysis of the Law class in law school, but I think it is sufficiently accessible for the layman, which is why I'm taking the time to review it. It's ...

Review: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters

User Review - Goodreads

I truly enjoyed Friedman's sensibility. I found his thought processes to be entertaining and elegant, though incomplete by his own admission. This is a great introduction to the approach of law from an economic perspective.

Contents

• Introduction: 3
• What Does Economics Have to Do with Law?: 8
• Efficiency and All That: 18
• Whats Wrong with the World Part 1: 28
• Whats Wrong with the World Part 2: 36
• Defining and Enforcing Rights Property Liability and Spaghetti: 47
• Of Burning Houses and Exploding Coke Bottles: 63
• Coin Flips and Car Crashes Ex Post versus Ex Ante: 74
• Games Bargains Bluffs and Other Rally Hard Stuff: 84
• As Much as Your Life Is Worth: 95
• The American Legal System in Brief: 103
• Mine Thine and Ours The Economics of Property Law: 112
• Clouds and Barbed Wire The Economics of Intellectual Properly: 128
• The Economics of Contract: 145
• Marriage Sex and Babies: 171
• Tort Law: 189
• Criminal Law: 223
• Antitrust: 244
• Other Paths: 263
• The CrimeTort Puzzle: 281
• Is the Common Law Efficient?: 297
• Epilogue: 309
• Index: 319

About the author

David Friedman is a visiting professor of economics at Santa Clara University. The son of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, he authored Price Theory, considered the discipline's primer on the subject. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. He resides with his family in San Jose.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters; Princeton paperbacks
• Author: David D. Friedman
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2000
• ISBN: 0691090092, 9780691090092
• Length: 329 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Economics / Theory; Law / Jurisprudence