The rapid developments in government contract law of the late 1990s and early 2000s have necessitated a new edition of this casebook, which offers the first contemporary one-volume casebook for a Government Contracts course. All chapters have been updated with new cases and notes, and two entirely new chapters have been added to ensure that the book's coverage is complete. The casebook makes government contract law accessible to readers of all backgrounds, from second-year law students who have taken only basic contract law, to commercial lawyers and non-lawyer government contract professionals seeking a broad, legally-focused introduction to the field. While all the traditional areas of interest receive coverage, the book emphasizes cases from increasingly important areas such as high technology, health care, commercial products, and state needs. Tiefer and Shook bring academic and practitioner experience and expertise to their treatment of government contract law. A teacher's manual is available.

To view or download the 2017 supplement to this book, click here. This new book revises, and adds new foci, to the authors' predecessor casebook Government Contract Law: Cases and Materials (2d ed. 2004). It retains the core chapters for a syllabus on the basics of government contracting law. The authors update the core chapters with short, student-friendly, tightly-edited cases. Many cases date from the 2000s, with most of the rest from the 1990s. These present current understandings of issues and doctrines in this rapidly evolving field. As new foci, the authors have greatly expanded the number of specialized chapters treating increasingly important topics. New chapters cover such fast-changing specialties as commercial and IDIQ contracting, intellectual property, health care, construction, government and contractor workforce, false claims and defective pricing, and government takings. Also, the book treats new procedures including protests of task order awards and claims for government breaches of contract. Dozens of fresh notes by the authors cover recent developments such as government acquisition of property rights in software, and contracting in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Tiefer and Shook bring academic and practitioner experience and expertise to their treatment of government contract law.

The dramatic growth of government over the course of the twentieth century since the New Deal prompts concern among libertarians and conservatives and also among those who worry about government’s costs, efficiency, and quality of service. These concerns, combined with rising confidence in private markets, motivate the widespread shift of federal and state government work to private organizations. This shift typically alters only who performs the work, not who pays or is ultimately responsible for it. “Government by contract” now includes military intelligence, environmental monitoring, prison management, and interrogation of terrorism suspects. Outsourcing government work raises questions of accountability. What role should costs, quality, and democratic oversight play in contracting out government work? What tools do citizens and consumers need to evaluate the effectiveness of government contracts? How can the work be structured for optimal performance as well as compliance with public values? Government by Contract explains the phenomenon and scope of government outsourcing and sets an agenda for future research attentive to workforce capacities as well as legal, economic, and political concerns.