Rating: 
Summary: Well written, well reasoned, and inspiringly insightful
Review: 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 application of law. In particular anyone interested in understanding how modern systems of law arose will find fascinating information in this book that isn't often discussed in your run-of-the-mill law, history, or economics courses. This is just the sort of information that is important to achieving a better understanding of the structure of legal systems, yet is, perhaps necessarily, left out of most courses in law (or history or economics) because it doesn't neatly fit into any one category.The use of economic tools and ideas to analyze and understand legal systems is a relatively new idea. Yet as you'll discover when reading this book, it is a very GOOD idea. One that yields immediate and satisfying results. The book places modern legal systems in their proper historical context. It compares private and public methods of handling a variety of legal issues and disputes. What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages the muggers to kill their victims (since they are less likely to be caught if there are no surviving witnesses). This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting. Buy this book or steal your friend's copy. It, along with David Friedman's other works, are well worth reading.
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