Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

In his new introduction to this current edition of this classic in the field originally published in 1982 (Humanities Press), Hoppe (economics, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas--as was the late author) extols Rothbard's marriage of the "value-free" science of economics with the normative enterprise of ethics and their offspring: libertarianism. Discussion areas are: natural law, a theory of liberty, the state vs. liberty, modern alternative theories of liberty, and toward a theory of strategy for liberty. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, (...) Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

I. Introduction Two kinds of remedies have traditionally been employed for breach of contract: legal relief and equitable relief. Legal relief normally takes the form of money damages. Equitable relief normally consists either of specific performance or an injunction – that is, the party in breach may be ordered to perform an act or to refrain from performing an act. In this article I will use a “consent theory of contract” to assess the choice between money damages and specific performance. (...) According to such a theory, contractual obligation is dependent on more fundamental entitlements of the parties and arises as a result of the parties' consent to transfer alienable rights. My thesis will be that the normal rule favoring money damages should be replaced with one that presumptively favors specific performance unless the parties have consented to money damages instead. The principal obstacle to such an approach is the reluctance of courts to specifically enforce contracts for personal services. The philosophical distinction between alienable and inalienable rights bolsters this historical reticence, since a right to personal services may be seen as inalienable. I will then explain why, if the subject matter of a contract for personal services is properly confined to an alienable right to money damages for failure to perform, specific enforcement of such contracts is no longer problematic. Finally, I shall consider whether the subject matter of contracts for corporate services is properly confined to money damages like contracts for personal services, or whether performance of corporate services can be made the subject of a valid rights transfer and judicially compelled in the same manner as contracts for external resources. (shrink)

L’article présente une étude critique des fondements méthodologiques de l’analyse économique du droit traditionnelle dans laquelle le droit est conçu comme le résultat optimal d’une comparaison de coûts et d’avantages sociaux. Cette procédure judiciaire qui vise en fait à simuler des solutions de marché “socialement efficientes” présuppose inévitablement l’omniscience du juge. Cependant dans le contexte de l’équilibre général, l’analyse économique du droit traditionnelle n’a pas de raison d’être, alors qu’elle s’avère impraticable dans le monde réel où elle serait pourtant nécessaire (...) afin de résoudre des problèmes de coordination entre les individus. A cet égard la théorie économique de l’Ecole Autrichienne qui insiste sur les problèmes informationnels de la société et qui décrit le droit comme une procédure de coordination fondée sur des règles abstraites de juste conduite, semble fournir des fondements plus appropriés pour une approche économique du droit. L’article utilise la méthodologie Autrichienne pour reconsidérer l’analyse économique du droit tout en insistant à la fois sur la dimension institutionnelle et la dimension éthique du droit. Le problème central est l’interdépendance entre le droit et l’ordre de marché, mais il est analysé dans des termes fondamentalement différents de ceux de l’analyse traditionnelle.The paper presents a critical analysis of the methodological foundations of conventional law and economics, where law is generally described as the optimal outcome ot a judicial balancing of social costs and benefits. This law making procedure which aims at simulating “socially efficient” market outcomes inevitably presupposes Judges’ omniscience. Nevertheless, in this context of full coordination, this type of law has no raison d’être, whereas it turns out to be infeasible in the real world where it would be necessary in order to solve information and coordination problems. In this respect, Austrian economic and legal theory which focuses on the knowledge problem of society and which describes law as a coordination procedure built on abstract rules of just conduct, seems to provide more appropriate foundations for an economic analysis of law. This paper uses the Austrian approach to reconsider economic analysis of law in a way that allows for both the institutional and the ethical dimensions of law. The central problem seems to lie in the interdependance of law and the ethical dimensions of law. The central problem seems to lie in the interdependancc of law and the market order but it is conceived in a very different way than it is in conventional analysis. (shrink)

In this book, he applies economic theory to four areas of interest to students of social and legal institutions: the theory of justice, primitive and ancient ...