内容简介：
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.
作者简介：
Biography
I am an academic economist currently employed as a law professor, although I have never taken a course for credit in either field. My specialty, insofar as I have one, is the economic analysis of law, the subject of my book _Law's Order_.
In recent years I have created and taught two new law school seminars at Santa Clara University. One was on legal issues of the 21st century, discussing revolutions that might occur as a result of technological change over the next few decades. Interested readers can find its contents in the manuscript of _Future Imperfect_, linked to my web page. Topics included encryption, genetic engineering, surveillance, and many others. The other seminar, which I am currently teaching, is on legal systems very different from ours. Its topics included the legal systems of modern gypsies, Imperial China, Ancient Athens, the Cheyenne Indians, ... . My web page has a link to the seminar web page.
I have been involved in recreational medievalism, via the Society for Creative Anachronism, for over thirty years. My interests there include cooking from medieval cookbooks, making medieval jewelery, telling medieval stories around a campfire creating a believable medieval islamic persona and fighting with sword and shield.
My involvement with libertarianism goes back even further. Among other things I have written on the possibility of replacing government with private institutions to enforce rights and settle disputes, a project sometimes labelled "anarcho-capitalism" and explored in my first book, _The Machinery of Freedom_, published in 1972 and still in print.
My most recent writing project is my first novel, _Harald_. Most of my interests feed into it in one way or another, but it is intended as a story, not a tract on political philosophy, law or economics. It is not exactly a fantasy, since there is no magic, nor quite a historical novel, since the history and geography are invented. The technology and social institutions are based on medieval and classical examples, with one notable exception.
目录：
Dedication
Part I: IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY (Not currently webbed)
Poem: A Saint Said
1. In Defense of Property
2. A Necessary Digression
3. Love Is Not Enough
Interlude
4. Robin Hood Sells Out
5. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Richer
6. Monopoly I: How To Lose Your Shirt
7. Monopoly II: State Monopoly for Fun and Profit
8. Exploitation and Interest
9. I Don't Need Nothing
Part II: LIBERTARIAN GRAB BAG OR HOW TO SELL THE STATE IN SMALL PIECES (Not currently webbed)
Poem: Paranoia
10. Sell the Schools
11. A Radical Critique of American Universities
12. The Impossibility of a University
13. Adam Smith U.
14. Open the Gates
15. Sell the Streets
16. 99and 44/100ths Percent Built
17. A First Step
18. Counterattack
19. Might Have Been
20. Is William F Buckley a Contagious Disease?
21. Its My Life
22. The Rights of Youth
23. Creeping Capitalism
24. If You Want It, Buy It
25. Scarce Means Finite
26. Pollution
27. Buckshot for a Socialist Friend
Part III: ANARCHY IS NOT CHAOS (two chapters webbed)
Poem: Anarchy is not Chaos
28. What is Anarchy? What is Government?
29. Police, Courts, and Laws--on theMarket
30. The Stability Problem
31.. Is Anarcho-Capitalism Libertarian?
32. And, As a Free Bonus
33. Socialism, Limited Government, Anarchy, and Bikinis
(A polish translation of Chapter 33 has also been webbed.)
34. National Defense: The Hard Problem
35. In Which Prediction is Reduced to Speculation
36. Why Anarchy?
37. Revolution ls the Hell of It
38. Economics of Theft, or the Nonexistence of the Ruling Class
39. The Right Sideof the Public Good Trap
40. How to Get There from Here
Postscript for Perfectionists
Part IV: FOR LIBERTARIANS--AN EXPANDED POSTSCRIPT (three chapters webbed)
Poem: Second Edition
41: Problems
42: Where I Stand
43: Answers: The Economic Analysis of Law
44. Private Law Enforcement, Medieval Iceland, and Libertarianism
(A Polish translation of Chapter 44 has been webbed.)
45. Is There a Libertarian Foreign Policy?
46. The Market for Money
47. Anarchist Politics:Concerning the Libertarian Party.
48. G. K. Chesterton--An Author Review
Appendix I: SomeNumbers
Appendix II: My Competition
Index