Stearns and Zywicki's Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law is the only course book specifically designed to instruct law students in the discipline of public choice. The book provides a comprehensive but nontechnical overview of interest group theory, social choice theory, game theory, and elementary price theory. It ties these concepts to a wide range of topics in both public and private law. The book contains chapters devoted to each set of methodological tools and specific institutional settings: legislatures, courts, executive branch and bureaus, and constitutions.

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. Ideal for course use, this volume offers a balanced and perceptive analysis and critique of an approach which, within limits, can illuminate the dynamics of government decision-making. “Law and Public Choice is a most valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature. It should be of great interest to lawyers, political scientists, and all others interested in issues at the intersection of government and law.”—Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago Law School

Public choice theory should be taken seriously--but not too seriously. In this thought-provoking book, Jerry Mashaw stakes out a middle ground between those who champion public choice theory (the application of the conventional methodology of economics to political science matters, also known as rational choice theory) and those who disparage it. He argues that in many cases public choice theory's reach has exceeded its grasp. In others, public choice insights have not been pursued far enough by those who are concerned with the operation and improvement of legal institutions. While Mashaw addresses perennial questions of constitutional law, legislative interpretation, administrative law, and the design of public institutions, he arrives at innovative conclusions. Countering the positions of key public choice theorists, Mashaw finds public choice approaches virtually useless as an aid to the interpretation of statutes, and he finds public choice arguments against delegating political decisions to administrators incoherent. But, using the tools of public choice analysts, he reverses the lawyers' conventional wisdom by arguing that substantive rationality review is not only legitimate but a lesser invasion of legislative prerogatives than much judicial interpretation of statutes. And, criticizing three decades of "law reform," Mashaw contends that pre-enforcement judicial review of agency rules has seriously undermined both governmental capacity and the rule of law.

Public choice is the study of behavior at the intersection of economics and political science. Since the pioneering work of Duncan Black in the 1940s, public choice has developed a rich literature, drawing from such related perspectives as history, philosophy, law, and sociology, to analyze political decision making (by citizen-voters, elected officials, bureaucratic administrators, lobbyists, and other "rational" actors) in social and economic context, with an emphasis on identifying differences between individual goals and collective outcomes. Constitutional political economy provides important insights into the relationship between effective constitutions and the behavior of ordinary political markets. In Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy, Charles Rowley and Friedrich Schneider have assembled an international array of leading authors to present a comprehensive and accessible overview of the field and its applications. Covering a wide array of topics, including regulation and antitrust, taxation, trade liberalization, political corruption, interest group behavior, dictatorship, and environmental issues, and featuring biographies of the founding fathers of the field, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and students, policymakers, economists, sociologists, and non-specialist readers interested in the dynamics of political economy.

This book provides an accessible introduction to the emerging field of behavioral public choice economics and the law. This field studies how public officials, lawmakers, and judges fall prey to their own biases and heuristics, and how constitutions and judicial doctrines can be structured to mitigate these cognitive shortcomings. Written lucidly in plain language, this book is invaluable to all students, scholars, and general readers interested in behavioral economics, law and economics, and political economy.

Covering over one-hundred topics on issues ranging from Law and Neuroeconomics to European Union Law and Economics to Feminist Theory and Law and Economics, The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics is the definitive work in the field of law and economics. The book gathers together scholars and experts in law and economics to create the most inclusive and current work on law and economics. Edited by Francisco Parisi, the Handbook looks at the origins of the field of law and economics, tracks its progression and increased importance to both law and economics, and looks to the future of the field and its continued development by examining a cornucopia of fields touched by work in law and economics. The uniqueness of its breadth, depth, and convenience make the volume essential to scholars, students, and contributors in the field of law and economics.

Public choice theory has become an increasingly significant aspect of public law scholarship. A more comprehensive knowledge of public institutions and their activities can illuminate our understanding of how legal rules shape the behavior of these institutions. This volume gathers together key papers highlighting the fundamental issues in the evolution of this subject. Besides providing an appreciation of the institutional complexity and potential weak points of democracies, public choice theory promises to show how political structures and processes shape outcomes for better or for worse. It thereby aids understanding and improvements to institutional design. Much of that design is expressed in the form of law, so the subject is of particular importance to legal scholars. This authoritative selection of articles provides a firm foundation to this important area of study.