Reviews for The economics of law

The average rating for The economics of law based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-30 00:00:00 william j bryant Builds on (morally and empirically) insane premises, but demonstrates some useful analytical tools. Friedman himself notes that it is intended as a 'how to think' rather than a 'what to think' book, and with some reservations I recommend it as such. Law's Order is unapologetically written from the perspective of a near-strawman economist: hard-nosed, committed to logical rigour above all else, willing to shave off the awkward complications of reality in order to make it theoretically tractable, and (arguably) smuggling in some rather extreme moral foundations under the guise of sceptical neutrality. I think you have to be careful with this sort of thing, because even when you know and acknowledge that your conclusions are based on dubious premises and simplified models, it's easy to imbue them with more normative force than they deserve. I feel like Friedman falls into this trap himself: although he acknowledges that wealth maximisation != happiness maximisation, that real people are not actually perfectly rational and fully informed, that there are always relevant facts missing from any simple model, and so on, he sure does seem wedded to the pursuit of (a somewhat naive concepion of) economic efficiency, and to individual freedom (of the right-wing libertarian variety) as a kind of panacea. My other criticism is that, although it is written in a fairly accessible style, it can be a bit of a slog -- sometimes because the pace or style of the explanation is (for me) a bit off, sometimes just because it's fairly dry stuff. It took me a long time to get through, and I often had to push myself to go back to it. Still, Friedman is clearly a very smart guy who, despite his ideological biases, cares about the rigorous pursuit and honest communication of truth. So long as you take his caveats literally, and remember to actively apply them throughout, I think this is a really useful and interesting book.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-06-22 00:00:00 Maurice Sims In this book the author applies the economic way of thinking to the law. He argues, and I think correctly, that economic analysis can be used to explain the law and suggest what the law should be. Assuming individuals are rational and that the economically efficient outcome (this can be defined a different ways, but I like to think of it as the outcome with the most benefit and the least cost) is likely the best outcome, the author uses examples to show how the economic analysis of law expands our knowledge and can help us make better decisions about what the law should be. It was a good book. However, it was slow in parts.