1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455065003321

Autore

Fried Barbara <1951->

Titolo

The progressive assault on laissez faire [[electronic resource] ] : Robert Hale and the first law and economics movement / / Barbara H. Fried

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Harvard University Press, 2001, c1998

ISBN

0-674-03730-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (352 p.)

Disciplina

330.122

Soggetti

Right of property - United States

Free enterprise - United States

Institutional economics

Neoclassical school of economics

Progressivism (United States politics)

Critical legal studies - United States

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [217]-332) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- 1 Introduction -- 2 The Empty Idea of Liberty -- 3 The Empty Idea of Property Rights -- 4 A Rent-Theory World -- 5 Property Theory in Practice: Rate Regulation of Public Utilities -- 6 Conclusion -- NOTES -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Law and economics is the leading intellectual movement in law today. This book examines the first great law and economics movement in the early part of the twentieth century through the work of one of its most original thinkers, Robert Hale. Beginning in the 1890s and continuing through the 1930s, progressive academics in law and economics mounted parallel assaults on free-market economic principles. They showed first that "private," unregulated economic relations were in fact determined by a state-imposed regime of property and contract rights. Second, they showed that the particular regime of rights that existed at that time was hard to square with any common-sense notions of social justice. Today, Hale is best known among contemporary legal academics and philosophers for his groundbreaking writings on coercion and consent in market relations. The bulk of his writing,



however, consisted of a critique of natural property rights. Taken together, these writings on coercion and property rights offer one of the most profound and elaborated critiques of libertarianism, far outshining the better-known efforts of Richard Ely and John R. Commons. In his writings on public utility regulation, Hale also made important contributions to a theory of just, market-based distribution. This first, full-length study of Hale's work should be of interest to legal, economic, and intellectual historians.