Fairness Versus Welfare

Rating:
Summary: All the world's a utility function...
Review: I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the foundational question of how we should evaluate legal rules. I should think that the book would be particularly useful for law students struggling to understand what makes their professors tick. The authors put forth perhaps the strongest case for economic analysis of law to date, daring to confront head on the BIG question of whether utilitarianism, or fairness for its own sake, should guide legal analysis. Unlike many economists, who bracket the fairness issue, the authors of Fairness versus Welfare rather daringly explore and defend the normativity of economic analysis. Hopefully, this book will better focus the debate between law and economics and rights theory. However, given the fact that its thesis is mistaken, the work's ultimate "utility" will depend largely on how actively fairness advocates respond!

Rating:
Summary: All the world's a utility function...
Review: I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the foundational question of how we should evaluate legal rules. I should think that the book would be particularly useful for law students struggling to understand what makes their professors tick. The authors put forth perhaps the strongest case for economic analysis of law to date, daring to confront head on the BIG question of whether utilitarianism, or fairness for its own sake, should guide legal analysis. Unlike many economists, who bracket the fairness issue, the authors of Fairness versus Welfare rather daringly explore and defend the normativity of economic analysis. Hopefully, this book will better focus the debate between law and economics and rights theory. However, given the fact that its thesis is mistaken, the work's ultimate "utility" will depend largely on how actively fairness advocates respond!