Law and Public Choice: A Critical Introduction

by Philip P. Frickey and Daniel A. Farber

Book Overview

In Law and Public Choice, Daniel Farber and Philip Frickey present a remarkably rich and accessible introduction to the driving principles of public choice. In this, the first systematic look at the implications of social choice for legal doctrine, Farber and Frickey carefully review both the empirical and theoretical literature about interest group influence and provide a nonmathematical introduction to formal models of legislative action...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226238032
• ISBN13: 9780226238036
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 169 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

public interest vs private interest

Law and Public Choice aims to be an introduction to economic models of rational behavior to explain the workings of political institutions in modern democracies. The book summarizes the strand of research in public and collective choice (or positive political theory, as American political scientists would rather say), that is, the fact that democracies require people to organize themselves to decide by voting how to allocate resources to public goods. Of course, the task is much more complicate than individuals have to face when to decide whether to buy cornflakes or Nasdaq stocks. Thus understood, the book leaves out the law and economics, and the comparative law and economics traditions. The book was released in 1991 and is now a little outdated and focuses too much on the American system. It is not a comprehensive text. For that the reader should consider Muller's Public Choice III or Cooter's Strategic Constitution, which are updated, comprehensive and devoted to students. Despite its caveats, this book is well written and engaging.