Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Simple Rules for a Complex World / Richard Allen Epstein.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2022]Copyright date: ©1995Description: 1 online resource (375 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674036567
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 340.1
LOC classification:
  • KF385 ǂb E67 1995eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Too Many Lawyers, Too Much Law -- I. Cutting through Complexity -- 1. The Virtues of Simplicity -- 2. The Enemies of Simplicity -- II. The Simple Rules -- 3. Autonomy and Property -- 4. Contract -- 5. Torts -- 6. Necessity, Coordination, and Just Compensation -- 7. Take and Pay -- III. The Rules in Action -- 8. Contracting for Labor -- 9. Employment Discrimination and Comparable Worth -- 10. Professional Liability for Financial Loss -- 11. The Origins of Product Liability Law -- 12. The Contemporary Product Liability Scene -- 13. The Internal Life of the Corporation -- 14. The Corporation and the World -- 15. Environmental Protection and Private Property -- Conclusion: The Challenges to Simple Rules -- Notes -- Index of Statutes -- Index of Cases -- General Index
Summary: Too many laws, too many lawyers--that's the necessary consequence of a complex society, or so conventional wisdom has it. Countless pundits insist that any call for legal simplification smacks of nostalgia, sentimentality, or naiveté. But the conventional view, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein tells us, has it exactly backward. The richer texture of modern society allows for more individual freedom and choice. And it allows us to organize a comprehensive legal order capable of meeting the technological and social challenges of today on the basis of just six core principles. In this book, Epstein demonstrates how. The first four rules, which regulate human interactions in ordinary social life, concern the autonomy of the individual, property, contract, and tort. Taken together these rules establish and protect consistent entitlements over all resources, both human and natural. These rules are backstopped by two more rules that permit forced exchanges on payment of just compensation when private or public necessity so dictates. Epstein then uses these six building blocks to clarify many intractable problems in the modern legal landscape. His discussion of employment contracts explains the hidden virtues of contracts at will and exposes the crippling weaknesses of laws regarding collective bargaining, unjust dismissal, employer discrimination, and comparable worth. And his analysis shows how laws governing liability for products and professional services, corporate transactions, and environmental protection have generated unnecessary social strife and economic dislocation by violating these basic principles.Simple Rules for a Complex World offers a sophisticated agenda for comprehensive social reform that undoes much of the mischief of the modern regulatory state. At a time when most Americans have come to distrust and fear government at all levels, Epstein shows how a consistent application of economic and political theory allows us to steer a middle path between too much and too little.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674036567

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Too Many Lawyers, Too Much Law -- I. Cutting through Complexity -- 1. The Virtues of Simplicity -- 2. The Enemies of Simplicity -- II. The Simple Rules -- 3. Autonomy and Property -- 4. Contract -- 5. Torts -- 6. Necessity, Coordination, and Just Compensation -- 7. Take and Pay -- III. The Rules in Action -- 8. Contracting for Labor -- 9. Employment Discrimination and Comparable Worth -- 10. Professional Liability for Financial Loss -- 11. The Origins of Product Liability Law -- 12. The Contemporary Product Liability Scene -- 13. The Internal Life of the Corporation -- 14. The Corporation and the World -- 15. Environmental Protection and Private Property -- Conclusion: The Challenges to Simple Rules -- Notes -- Index of Statutes -- Index of Cases -- General Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Too many laws, too many lawyers--that's the necessary consequence of a complex society, or so conventional wisdom has it. Countless pundits insist that any call for legal simplification smacks of nostalgia, sentimentality, or naiveté. But the conventional view, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein tells us, has it exactly backward. The richer texture of modern society allows for more individual freedom and choice. And it allows us to organize a comprehensive legal order capable of meeting the technological and social challenges of today on the basis of just six core principles. In this book, Epstein demonstrates how. The first four rules, which regulate human interactions in ordinary social life, concern the autonomy of the individual, property, contract, and tort. Taken together these rules establish and protect consistent entitlements over all resources, both human and natural. These rules are backstopped by two more rules that permit forced exchanges on payment of just compensation when private or public necessity so dictates. Epstein then uses these six building blocks to clarify many intractable problems in the modern legal landscape. His discussion of employment contracts explains the hidden virtues of contracts at will and exposes the crippling weaknesses of laws regarding collective bargaining, unjust dismissal, employer discrimination, and comparable worth. And his analysis shows how laws governing liability for products and professional services, corporate transactions, and environmental protection have generated unnecessary social strife and economic dislocation by violating these basic principles.Simple Rules for a Complex World offers a sophisticated agenda for comprehensive social reform that undoes much of the mischief of the modern regulatory state. At a time when most Americans have come to distrust and fear government at all levels, Epstein shows how a consistent application of economic and political theory allows us to steer a middle path between too much and too little.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)