Focusing on issues of vital importance to those seeking to understand and reform the tort system, this volume takes a multi-disciplinary approach, including theoretical economic analysis, empirical analysis, socio-economic analysis, and behavioral anal

Written by a lawyer and an economist, this is the first full-length economic study of tort law--the body of law that governs liability for accidents and for intentional wrongs such as battery and defamation. Landes and Posner propose that tort law is best understood as a system for achieving an efficient allocation of resources to safety--that, on the whole, rules and doctrines of tort law encourage the optimal investment in safety by potential injurers and potential victims. The book contains both a comprehensive description of the major doctrines of tort law and a series of formal economic models used to explore the economic properties of these doctrines. All the formal models are translated into simple commonsense terms so that the "math less" reader can follow the text without difficulty; legal jargon is also avoided, for the sake of economists and other readers not trained in the law. Although the primary focus is on explaining existing doctrines rather than on exploring their implementation by juries, insurance adjusters, and other "real world" actors, the book has obvious pertinence to the ongoing controversies over damage awards, insurance rates and availability, and reform of tort law-in fact it is an essential prerequisite to sound reform. Among other timely topics, the authors discuss punitive damage awards in products liability cases, the evolution of products liability law, and the problem of liability for "mass disaster" torts, such as might be produced by a nuclear accident. More generally, this book is an important contribution to the "law and economics" movement, the most exciting and controversial development in modern legal education and scholarship, and will become an obligatory reference for all who are concerned with the study of tort law.

This book looks at the negligence concept of tort law and studies the efficiency issue arising from the determination of negligence. It does so by scrutinizing actual court decisions from three common law jurisdictions – Britain, India and the United States of America. This volume fills a very significant gap, scrutinizing 52 landmark judgments from these three countries, by focussing on the negligent affliction of economic loss determined by common law courts and how these findings relate to the existing theoretical literature. By doing so, it examines the formalization of legal concepts in theory, primarily the question of negligence determination and liability, and their centrality in theories concerning tort law. This book will be very helpful for students, professors and practitioners of law, jurisprudence and legal theory. It will additionally be of use to researchers and academics interested in law and economics, procedure and legal history.

The field of law and economics has matured to a point where scholars employ economic methods to understand the nature of legal rules and guide legal reform. This text is a broad survey of that scholarship as it has been applied to problems in tort, contracts, property and litigation.

Provides students with a method for applying economic analysis to the study of legal rules and institutions. Four key areas of law are covered: property; contracts; torts; and crime and punishment. Added examples and cases help to clarify economic applications further.

What effects do laws have? Do individuals drive more cautiously, clear ice from sidewalks more diligently, and commit fewer crimes because of the threat of legal sanctions? Do corporations pollute less, market safer products, and obey contracts to avoid suit? And given the effects of laws, which are socially best? Such questions about the influence and desirability of laws have been investigated by legal scholars and economists in a new, rigorous, and systematic manner since the 1970s. Their approach, which is called economic, is widely considered to be intellectually compelling and to have revolutionized thinking about the law. In this book Steven Shavell provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of the economic approach to the building blocks of our legal system, namely, property law, tort law, contract law, and criminal law. He also examines the litigation process as well as welfare economics and morality. Aimed at a broad audience, this book requires neither a legal background nor technical economics or mathematics to understand it. Because of its breadth, analytical clarity, and general accessibility, it is likely to serve as a definitive work in the economic analysis of law.

Accident law, if properly designed, is capable of reducing the incidence of mishaps by making people act more cautiously. Since the 1960s, a group of legal scholars and economists have focused on identifying the effects of accident law on people's behavior. Steven Shavell’s book is the definitive synthesis of research to date in this new field.