This book is both an examination of, and a contribution to, our understanding of the theoretical foundations of the common law of contract. Focusing on contemporary debates in contract theory, Contract Theory aims to help readers better understand the nature and justification of the general idea of contractual obligation, as well as the nature and justification of the particular rules that make up the law of contract. The book is in three parts. Part I introduces the idea of 'cont...

The foundational text of libertarian thought, named one of the 100 Most Influential Books since World War II (Times Literary Supplement)First published in response to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has since become one of the defining texts in classic libertarian thought. Challenging and ultimately rejecting liberal, socialist, and conservative agendas, Nozick boldly asserts that the rights of ...

In a concise, compelling argument, one of the founders and most influential advocates of the law and economics movement divides the subject into two separate areas, which he identifies with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The first, Benthamite, strain, “economic analysis of law,” examines the legal system in the light of economic theory and shows how economics might render law more effective. The second strain, law and economics, gives equal status to law, and explores how the more ...

To gain a deep understanding of contract law, one needs to master not only the rules and principles of the field, but also its underlying theory and justification, and its long and intricate history. This book offers an accessible introduction to all aspects of American contract law, useful to both first-year law students and advanced contract scholars. The book is grounded on up-to-date scholarship and contains detailed references to cases, statutes, Restatements and international legal p...

Economists are sometimes praised and often chastised for what happens to the nation and the world economies. But what exactly do economists do to earn either praise or scorn? Author Attiat F. Ott with Sheila Vegari explores the answer to that question in What Economists Do: A Journey through the History of Economic Thought.Ott and Vegari outline the discipline of economics through the views and ideas of nine political economists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, ...

Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations, first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutili...

The Classical Economists Revisited conveys the extent, diversity, and richness of the literature of economics produced in the period extending from David Hume's Essays of 1752 to the final contributions of Fawcett and Cairnes in the 1870s. D. P. O'Brien thoroughly updates, rewrites, and expands the vastly influential work he first published in 1975, The Classical Economists. In particular, he sets out to make clear the shaping of a comprehensive vision of the wor...

Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-center politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In his new book Ronald Dworkin insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution tha...

Whatever deficits remain in the Canadian project to make justice available to all, class actions have been heralded as a success. The theme of access to justice runs throughout the discourse on collective litigation, but what do access and justice mean in this context?Class actions have been employed over the past several decades to overcome barriers for those who would otherwise have no recourse to the courts. Class Actions in Canada critically and empir...

This book offers nine key ideas about tort law that will help the reader to understand its various social functions and evaluate its effectiveness in performing those functions. The book focuses, in particular, on how tort law can guide people's behaviour, and the political and social environments within which it operates. It also provides the reader with a wealth of detail about the ideas and values that underlie tort 'doctrine'-tort law's rules and principles, and the way those rules and...

Will Hutton argues that Keynesian revolution has yet to take place. Economists, he finds, have not yet come to terms with the heart of Keynes' argument: that there are limits to what prices can do in a market economy. But referring closely to Keynes' writings, Hutton demonstrates that Keynes was concerned to show how the financial sector of the economy originated and how it reinforced the incapacities of the market economy.Post-war Keynesianism, Will Hutton concludes, has overstressed the ...