Friedman D.D. Law’s Order: What Economics Has To Do With Law And Why It Matters

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. – 337 p.This book is aimed at three different sorts of reader. The first is the proverbial intelligent layman — someone who thinks it would be interesting to know about law and economics and what they have to do with each other, himself, and the world in which he lives and so is reading this book for the same sort of reasons that make me read The Selfish Gene or The Red Queen. The second is the legal professional who would like to know more about the economic approach to his field. The third is the student, most probably in an economics department or a law school, who is reading this book because his professor told him to — and will, I hope, find that that is not the only reason to do so. One problem in writing for different sorts of readers is that they want different sorts of books. Students, especially law students, and, to some degree, legal professionals expect a scholarly apparatus of footnotes, case cites, extensive bibliographic references, and the like that the intelligent lay reader is likely to find clumsy and unnecessary. I have dealt with that problem by moving the scholarly apparatus to cyberspace. This book is written for the lay reader, with no footnotes and few case cites or references. To go with it, I have produced a web site containing, I hope, everything that the student or legal professional will find missing in the hard copy currently in his hands.What Does Economics Have to Do with Law?
Efficiency and All That
What’s Wrong with the World, Part 1
What’s Wrong with the World, Part 2
Defining and Enforcing Rights: Property, Liability, and Spaghetti
Of Burning Houses and Exploding Coke Bottles
Coin Flips and Car Crashes: Ex Post versus Ex Ante
Games, Bargains, Bluffs, and Other Really Hard Stuff
As Much as Your Life Is Worth Intermezzo. The American Legal System in Brief
Mine, Thine, and Ours: The Economics of Property Law
Clouds and Barbed Wire: The Economics of Intellectual Property
The Economics of Contract
Marriage, Sex, and Babies
Tort Law
Criminal Law
Antitrust
Other Paths
The Crime/Tort Puzzle
Is the Common Law Efficient?
Epilogue