Richard A. Epstein traces the Old Court's treatment of federalism and economic liberty and shows how early 20th-century progressives prevailed eventually in undermining those principles, supplanting competitive markets with government-created cartels and monopolies
In Takings, Epstein argued that the takings clause was crafted to ensure to the extent possible that no individuals were net losers from government programs of taxation or regulation. Today in Bargaining with the State, he turns to the fair distribution of the gains from desirable government programs and the implicit peril to individual liberty and social welfare when government attaches strings to persons receiving its benefits. In so doing he offers a rigorous solution to the so-called paradox of unconstitutional conditions: why people bargaining with the state need not always take the bitter with the sweet, but may sometimes keep the government benefit while cutting the government string.".
Modern administrative law has been the subject of intense and protracted intellectual debate. In this book, Richard A. Epstein, one of America's most prominent legal scholars, provides a withering critique of the progressive administrative state and calls for a return law to its original design, meaning, and structure.
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 naivete. 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.
This book is the first to offer a comprehensive examination of the pharmaceutical industry by following the tortuous course of a new drug as it progresses from early development to final delivery. Richard A. Epstein looks closely at the regulatory framework that surrounds all aspects of making pharmaceutical products today, and he assesses which current legal and regulatory practices make sense and which have gone awry. While critics of pharmaceutical companies call for ever more stringent controls on virtually every aspect of drug development and approval, Epstein cautions that the effect of such an approach will be to stifle pharmaceutical innovation and slow the delivery of beneficial treatments to the patients who need them. The author considers an array of challenges that confront the industry--conflicts of interest among government, academe, and the drug companies; intellectual property rights that govern patents; FDA regulation; pricing disputes; marketing practices; and liability issues, including those brought to light in the recent VIOXX case. Epstein argues that to ensure the continuing creativity, efficiency, and success of the pharmaceutical industry, the best system will feature strong property rights and clearly enforceable contracts, with minimal regulatory and judicial interference.
The renowned Richard A. Epstein continues to lead your students to a thorough understanding of the moral, economic, and historical underpinnings of tort law in this new, completely updated and streamlined edition of his very successful casebook CASES AND MATERIAL ON TORTS, Sixth Edition, features expanded coverage of toxic torts and joint and several liability revised coverage of product liability the addition of new principal cases, including Rinaldo v. McGovern, Knight v. Jewett, In re Amoco Cadiz, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Haslip, and White v. Samsung Electronics America Key organizational changes-including a chapter that combines joint, several, and vicarious liability, and the grouping of all the materials on intentional torts in Chapter One-enhance the book's teachability As in previous editions, Epstein makes the highly technical issues of modern tort law manageable. In addition to case materials, he incorporates selections from modern legal scholarship that comment on issues raised but not necessarily fully resolved by the cases. Numerous notes discuss ambiguities in the present law and the desirability of alternative legal rules. Your students will find this book-in its reorganized and revised form-particularly readable. Take a fresh look at CASES AND MATERIALS ON TORTS, Sixth Edition-and its excellent Teacher's Manual-for use in your next Torts course.
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