Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Asst. Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: Officially Monday 2:30-4. But I'm usually in at Carow Hall 10b. Call ahead (703-993-2326) if you want to be sure.

Catalog Entry:

Econ 415 Law and Economics (3:3:0). Prerequisite: ECON 306 or permission of instructor. An economic analysis of the law. Topics include an introduction to legal institutions and legal analysis; application of economic concepts to the law of property, contracts and torts, criminal law, and constitutional law; the economic efficiency of the common law; and a public choice perspective on the evolution of the law.

Robert Cooter, Thomas Ulen, Law & Economics, Third Edition, 2000, Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-321-06482-8.

David D. Friedman, Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters, 2000, Princeton Univ. Press, ISBN 0-691-01016-1.

Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law, 5th ed., 1998. Aspen Publishers, ISBN 1-56706-562-7

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To become familiar with basic facts and issues in the economics of law, and to be able to use basic theory of law and economics to argue for particular legal outcomes.

• Class Participation Please contribute to class discussions.
• Quizes Four in-class quizes will given, roughly every three weeks. Each quiz will emphasize the lectures and text readings since the previous quiz. Quizes are open book, open notes.
• Legal Opinions Five times you will write a defense of your opinions on a legal topic. Four times the topic will be assigned, one time you can choose a topic. The assigned topics will be unusual, in order to encourage you to think them through yourself, rather than to look up what others have said.
• There will be no final exam in this course.

1. Property: Who Gets What Asteriods and Sunlight?
2. Contract: Enforce Voluntary No-Fault Contract On Pedestrian-Car Accident?
3. Tort: Negative Liability for Introducing Couples
4. Crime: Choose punishment types under private law (e.g., fine, torture, prison, death, prison rape)
5. Your Choice of Topic (If you ask, we can schedule a class discussion of your chosen topic.)

• Quizes: 28Sept,19Oct,16Nov,7Dec
• Legal Opinions: 1Oct,22Oct,19Nov,12Dec,12Dec

• Class Participate 10%, 10% per Quiz, 10% per Legal Opinion.