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

~ (Author) "YOU LIVE IN A STATE where the most severe criminal punishment is life imprisonment..." (more)
Key Phrases: inefficient offenses, ante punishment, more efficient punishment, United States, New York, Big Lake (more...)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Friedman, a professor at the University of Santa Clara School of Law who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, advocates an economic analysis of law and further suggests that there is a strong correspondence between efficiency and justice. Since efficiency is the foundation of modern economics, he argues, economics can be used to explain and shape the law in ways that can benefit us all. Especially insightful is the author's application of this theory to tort and contract law, which impose obligations based upon law and mutual consent, respectively. Friedman delineates formulae for dispute resolution in these and other areas of the law. His approach is modeled upon the teachings of noted British economist Ronald Coase, whose theorem on transaction costs has formed the basis for analysis of economic problems arising from tort and contract litigation for the last 40 years. The book's specialized audience includes students of law and economics served by academic and law libraries and perhaps private firm libraries whose staff serve client needs in the two aforementioned areas of litigation.
-Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The author sets out to provide an economic analysis of law. We learn that economics, whose fundamental issue is the implications of rational choice, is an essential tool for figuring out the effects of legal rules. Knowing what effects rules will have is central both to understanding the rules we have and to deciding what rules we should have. The first section of the book considers basic economic concepts, such as rationality and economic efficiency, that can be used to understand a wide range of legal issues. The book's second section applies economics to the analysis of the core areas of law, such as intellectual property and contracts. Friedman, a law school professor and economist, states that his target reader for this book is an intelligent layman, followed by law professionals and students. Another view is that this is really a textbook in disguise, which will be used primarily in the classroom by the author and other law professors. Mary Whaley --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

Paperback: 344 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 1, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691090092
ISBN-13: 978-0691090092
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #421,364 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
YOU LIVE IN A STATE where the most severe criminal punishment is life imprisonment. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inefficient offenses, ante punishment, more efficient punishment, dominant word processor, clover costs, probability multiplier, efficient legal rules, fraudulent prosecution, efficient punishments, opportunistic breach, optimal punishment, dual causation, spark arrester, post punishment, penal slavery, caveat venditor, punishment cost, ordinary damages, efficient legal system, potential tortfeasors, tug owner, private norms, holdout problem, expected punishment, net damage

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, New York, Big Lake, Shasta County, Coase Theorem, Stack Island, Doomsday Machine, Richard Posner, Ronald Coase, Standard Oil, Journal of Legal Studies, New Orleans, Robert Ellickson, Further Reading Readers, Harvard University Press, Secret Service, The Problem of Social Cost

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 16 books:

The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling on page 274
Remaking Eden by Lee M. Silver on page 188
Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) by Neal Stephenson on page 97
Price Theory by Milton Friedman on page 27
The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics) by Adam Smith on page 243

See all 16 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Cases and Materials on Torts by Richard A. Epstein

Discusses:

The Machinery of Freedom by David D. Friedman

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The Oxford Companion to American Law by Kermit L. Hall

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A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory by Dennis Patterson

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	87% buy the item featured on this page: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters 4.3 out of 5 stars (15) $23.72
	5% buy Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life 3.6 out of 5 stars (33) $12.47
	4% buy An Introduction to Law and Economics (Coursebook Series) 5.0 out of 5 stars (3) $32.34
	3% buy Principles of Economics 4.6 out of 5 stars (12) $156.22

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Organized, Clear and Concise, August 21, 2000

By	M. Steckbeck - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters. (Hardcover)

David Friedman presents a well organized, clear and concise treatise of Law and Economics from a positive perspective. This book is orgainzed into twenty-two chapters dealing with everything from the efficiency of law to antitrust enforcement. Friedman uses excellent examples and writes in a clear manner making this book easily understood by the layman, first year law students or undergraduate economics students.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should Voodoo practice be punishable?, January 5, 2004

By	E. Husman "ehusman" (Las Cruces, NM USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As soon as I was finished with this book, I turned around and read it again. Friedman is picking up a theme that he introduced towards the end of the revised Machinery of Freedom, in which he states that in order to understand certain mechanisms, we must undertake the economic analysis of law. This discipline was generally considered to have been initiated by Ronald Coase and taken up and popularized by Richard Posner. Friedman's own work advances the study into areas of law that relate to the internet and computers.
This particular book, however, concentrates on advancing the work done by Posner to a wider audience. Posner's perspective is that of a very, very talented legal theorist attempting to apply economic tools to law; Friedman's is that of a very talented economist applying his own discipline to law.
The complete book is available online; in fact the book was intended to be an off-line anchor for a number of other links. Friedman does away with references to landmark cases, mathematics, and other references in the book, and moves them all to the online version. While it seemed like a good idea at thte time, I ultimately found it to be annoying.

I would say that this is the first book I've read that connects technical economic ideas - like efficiency, the Coase Theorem, externalities, and rent-seeking - to the real world with practical applications.

Like whether or not voodoo practice should be punishable as attempted murder (huh? Read the book - this and other stories are both entertaining and enlightening).

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging and Thought-Provoking Reflections, April 4, 2002

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters. (Hardcover)

At the outset, I must acknowledge that this proved to be one of the most challenging books I have read in recent years. (You can thus understand why it was also among the most thought-provoking books I have read in recent years.) The subtitle informed me that Friedman would explain "what economics has to do with law and why it matters." In the Introduction, he observes:

"The legal rules that we are most familiar with are laws created by legislatures and enforced by courts and police. But even in our society much of the law is the creation of not of legislatures but of judges, embedded in past precedences that determine how future cases will be decided; much enforcement of the law is by private parties such as tort victims and their lawyers rather than by police; and substantial bodies of legal rules take the form, not the laws, but of private norms, privately enforced."

Friedman helps his reader to "understand various systems of legal rules by asking what consequences they will produce in a world in which rational individuals adjust their actions to the legal rules they face." He cites two possible objectives of the economic approach to achieve such understanding the logic of law: the law may have no logic to understand or the law does have a logic "but that it is, or at least ought to be, concerned not with economic efficiency but with justice." These are indeed critically important issues. How to address them? Friedman does so with an economic analysis of the law in terms of both economic ideas and areas of the law. First, he examines basic economic concepts (e.g.) "that can be used to to understand a wide range of legal issues. Then he shifts his attention to various questions raised what that examination reveals. For example: Why do other legal systems differ so much from ours? Why have two legal systems -- tort law and criminal law -- which "do roughly the same thing [but] in different ways?" Why not eliminate one of them? What arguments can be made to support or oppose the view that "judge-made law" is economically efficient? In the final chapter, he summarizes "what we have learned about systems of legal rules" throughout his extended analysis of the interaction of law with economics.

If I correctly understand what Friedman has shared throughout the book (and I may well do not), his ultimate objective is to create what is (in effect) a rough draft of what in final form would be a much more efficient legal system. Such a system would presumably increase the efficiency of other domestic systems (e..g. political and economic) as well as, in all probability, the efficiency of those systems' interaction with counterparts in other countries. For me at least, this was not an easy book to read, in part because I lack any formal education in either law or economics but also because of the inherent difficulty of drawing correlations and suggesting cause-and-effect relationships between two such complex human enterprises...

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Seems Like Normal Law and Econ to Me!
I had heard a lot about David Friedman over the years... mostly words like "loony" and "anarchist." Being a great admirer of his father's work I decided to give this book a read... Read more

Published 22 months ago by The Stranger

5.0 out of 5 stars Layman Introduction to Economics of Law
Law's Order is an introduction of applying economics analysis on laws for common layman. Comparing with the other textbooks on economics analysis of law, Law's Order is less... Read more

Published on August 4, 2007 by Tam Chun Lin

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening, Fun & Important Read
It's a dense and fun work in a very interesting and important topic. It was my first book on law&economics, and I am very satisfied with it. Read more

Published on May 27, 2006 by Eduardo G. Veiga

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting read, annoying footnote approach
Liked the book. But instead of using citations and footnotes, he uses icons that point to his web site. This is supposed to be make it easier to read, but it's very annoying. Read more

Published on August 7, 2003

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice, but a little bit too biased
David Friedman is anarcho-capitalist who teaches economics to law students. This book, written mainly for laymen, shows both sides of him. Read more

Published on July 13, 2003 by Michael Greinecker

5.0 out of 5 stars not a bad book
It's a pretty good book...
Oh and one big real why I even decided to write a review is that David Friedman is actually the son of Milton Friedman. Read more

Published on June 7, 2003 by Paul Ma

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling reading about a different kind of "legal" system.
Anyone who has had the privilige of debating David Friedman on the Internet knows that he is though-provoking. Read more

Published on March 20, 2003 by Brett Kottmann

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction to the topic
Clearly written, good for the smart layperson. A helpful and persuasive introduction to law and economics as concieved by the Chicago school, though some of Friedman's more... Read more

Published on January 9, 2003 by John Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun, clear read
A book on an interesting topic, written more for the layman than for the specialist (but with references for the latter), Law's Order introduces the basic economic aparatus... Read more

Published on May 14, 2002 by Dean Jens

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, well reasoned, and inspiringly insightful
This book, as its title suggests, is on the ECONOMICS of law. And as Dr. Friedman skillfully illustrates in the text, economics has a great deal to say about both the theory and... Read more

Published on October 11, 2001

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