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Richard A. Epstein

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Simple Rules for a Complex World

by Richard A. Epstein (Author)

4.5 23 ratings

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Too many laws, too many lawyers--that's the necessary consequence of a complex society, or so conventional wisdom has it. Countless pundits insist that any call for legal simplification smacks of nostalgia, sentimentality, or naiveté. But the conventional view, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein tells us, has it exactly backward. The richer texture of modern society allows for more individual freedom and choice. And it allows us to organize a comprehensive legal order capable of meeting the technological and social challenges of today on the basis of just six core principles. In this book, Epstein demonstrates how.

The first four rules, which regulate human interactions in ordinary social life, concern the autonomy of the individual, property, contract, and tort. Taken together these rules establish and protect consistent entitlements over all resources, both human and natural. These rules are backstopped by two more rules that permit forced exchanges on payment of just compensation when private or public necessity so dictates. Epstein then uses these six building blocks to clarify many intractable problems in the modern legal landscape. His discussion of employment contracts explains the hidden virtues of contracts at will and exposes the crippling weaknesses of laws regarding collective bargaining, unjust dismissal, employer discrimination, and comparable worth. And his analysis shows how laws governing liability for products and professional services, corporate transactions, and environmental protection have generated unnecessary social strife and economic dislocation by violating these basic principles.

Simple Rules for a Complex World offers a sophisticated agenda for comprehensive social reform that undoes much of the mischief of the modern regulatory state. At a time when most Americans have come to distrust and fear government at all levels, Epstein shows how a consistent application of economic and political theory allows us to steer a middle path between too much and too little.

Editorial Reviews

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“A book called 'The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America' by attorney Philip Howard has captured the attention of Washington's policy community with its maddening accounts of overzealous regulation and complex litigation. But Mr. Howard's appeal for enforcing rules with a dose of common sense never sets forth a framework for bringing about legal simplification. That's why Richard Epstein's new book...is such a suitable companion to Mr. Howard's battle cry. Mr. Epstein...believes that the traditional common law is actually more attuned to the modern world...He argues that the more complex the world, the less bureaucrats and lawmakers can know about how everything interacts, and the more perverse and inefficient the law will become...Mr. Epstein's relentlessly logical arguments tell us why we should return to the tried-and-true rules of the common law. Like manners, the common law has proven useful and long lasting precisely because it is so well-suited to a world of strangers.”―John H. Fund, Wall Street Journal

“Richard A. Epstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, has a record of proposing radical and extreme alterations in key areas of law--alterations that perhaps initially could be dismissed as so far from the center of legal thinking as to be of only theoretical interest but then turn out to have much more political life in them than one could have thought possible...Mr. Epstein has to be taken seriously, and not only because of the power of his reasoning and his authoritative command of the common law and political philosophy...The reasoning is strong, the knowledge of specific areas of policies is deep, and behind them stands his basic commitment to a more productive and efficient society...It is bracing to undergo a cold bath in the pure doctrine of the simple rules, and in many areas they will give us some practical guidance.”―Nathan Glazer, New York Times Book Review

“Simple Rules for a Complex World is a clear, consistent, libertarian economic approach to the law that should keep you interested from start to finish.”―Charles W. Chesbro, Trial

“This book is a tour de force of legal history and analysis. It would have been timeless in any event, but the current Congress' agenda makes it timely as well. Property rights, product and professional liability, a flat tax and environmental protection are now front and center; labor law reform and comparable worth may soon crowd their way onto the agenda as well. Long-range vision and wisdom are too seldom combined with topical analysis, but Simple Rules for a Complex World has this invaluable quality...What Mr. Epstein has accomplished, then, is not the fabrication of a framework but the distillation of one. He has articulated and rationalized basic principles of law in a creative way that shows these principles to have both historical and theoretical primacy. At a time when much legal scholarship is devoted to the deconstruction of the root of our legal order, Mr. Epstein has written a book of reconstruction.”―Roger Clegg, Washington Times

“A persuasive argument for the American legal system's return to the common-sense rules of common law, by a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago.”―Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He is the author of, among other books, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain; Simple Rules for a Complex World; Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law; and The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press (March 25, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 361 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674808215
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674808218
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 0.94 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #801,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #24 in Legal Remedies (Books)
- #638 in Law Enforcement (Books)
- #834 in Law Enforcement Politics

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4.5 23 ratings

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Doug
Fair Marketing
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2024
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A Tight and Valuable Summary of the Common Law approach to Justice
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021
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This is an accessible and concise introduction to so many concepts simultaneously, at least: to the proper goal of a system of laws, to the appearance of a particularly effective such system through the steady growth of the common law, and to a cogent summary of the principles underlying this system in 6 simple rules.

The ideas here are Old, in that they have a pedigree reaching back through Coase and F. A. Hayek, through Aquinas, to Roman law itself.
But they are not awarded special deference due to their age. Rather, Epstein reveres these ideas _just because_ they have been so rigorously and assiduously criticized both throughout history and in our modern times, and consistently they exhibit virtues in actual cases that urge their adoption over many popular alternatives.

Epstein is both eloquent and thorough in his articulation of a well-functioning system of laws, a system that understandably dovetails with Epstein's overarching philosophy of Classical Liberalism, but which nevertheless stands on its own as a masterful and useful restatement of a virtuous framework of organizing mutually-beneficial interactions between individuals who do not need to share any beliefs other than their observance of these few laws.

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david j. blackstone
Classic Legal Economics book
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2019
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Great book by legal giant from the Chicago School of Economics.

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Brian P Woods
was a brilliant idealist, a Monrail Thinker
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2017
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This is not a book for folk who believe in simple (ie; naive) behaviours: our government controlled economies are complex and it requires sophisticated rules in order to ensure unscrupulus, powerful individuals and groups (political;,administrative and corporate) are kept in check. The author admits to being influenced positively by Frederick Hayek (The Road to Serfdom). Hayek, unfortunately, was a brilliant idealist, a Monrail Thinker, a simpleton 'Preacher': suckered lots of folks especially the high academics. The most useful parts of the text were the Introduction and the Conclusion - the remainder was quite technical (legal stuff) and of little interest to me. The text is at this point in time dated and would only be useful to academic scholars who were interested in the development of a particular line of political economic theorising and policy-making from the mid 1970s. The author does write well. I enjoyed reading the parts I did read - though I was continuously on the alert for the inevitable 'Hayekisms'.

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Danielle
Simpler is better because it works and costs less
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2014
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Addresses the legal system with an eye toward "necessary and sufficient" rules. Valuable in helping me get a handle on how to approach fixing the stifling complexity of our current system.

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John Pate
a good book.
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2000
Professor Richard Epstein does a very convincing job in this book of articulating a legal system which is far more practical and comprehensible than the regime we currently enjoy. In the tradition of the law and economics approach, Epstein's major theme is that the administrative costs associated with so much contemporary and complex law far exceed any incremental benefit in the social incentive structures they create. Whether he is dicussing contracts, torts, products liablility, or anti-discrimination laws, Epstein makes an intellectual, yet common-sense case as to how they should be reformed, or, in the case of anti-discrimination laws, why they should be abandoned. Epstein makes no bones that the complexity of law, while driven in part by a legal system which benefits from such complexity, is also the product of sincere efforts by well-intentioned individuals to create a legal system that can produce an individually fair result in almost any set of circumstances. This is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle to the adoption of the legal principles outlined by Epstein in "Simple Rules" - a narcissism shared by so many judges and lawmakers which has always seemed to prevent them from fully coming to grips with their own limitations.

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John S. Ryan
Cost-benefit analysis in defense of liberty?
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2001
Prof. Richard Epstein has written a brilliant book here. His thesis, at heart, is that the world operates more efficiently and productively when legal rules are "simple" than when they are complex.

In order to elaborate this thesis, he spells out just what he means by "simple," proposes a handful of simple rules himself in various areas of law (property, contracts, torts), and shows how they play out in action (in, e.g., labor contracting, employment discrimination, and products liability). In each case he argues, with much success, that it just wouldn't be efficient to try to improve on the results provided by the "simple" rules.

I especially recommend this book, and Epstein's work generally, to law students. Epstein's knowledge of the law is thorough and deep; One-Ls will find it useful to keep it handy for the whole year.

So why only four stars? Partly because I think cost-benefit analysis is neither an adequate defense of liberty against the regulatory State nor an adequate foundation for law; and partly because Epstein's reliance on such analysis leads him toward (though he stops short of actually arriving at) positions I regard as non- or anti-libertarian.

This review isn't the place to critique consequentialism; for a more or less standard and (I think) decisive critique, the reader is referred to W.D. Ross's _Foundations of Ethics_, which, after sixty-odd years, is still one of the most judicious works on ethics ever written. Suffice it to say that I think we can increase efficiency by pursuing justice, but not vice versa; consequentialism and its subspecies utilitarianism seem to me to be not so much ways of answering moral questions as of never raising them. The "maximization" of happiness is one ground of moral obligation, but not the only one. (And in general, I simply fail to understand recent libertarian interest in an ethical school founded by a man who regarded natural rights as "nonsense" and imprescriptible natural rights as "nonsense upon stilts.")

More serious, from a libertarian point of view, is that Epstein comes within inches of allowing a positive role for antitrust law. Now, mind you, he doesn't _quite_ do so. Indeed he calls for the repeal of the Sherman Act and related legislation, and he opposes the use of government power to distinguish between "corporate combinations that increase market competition" (p. 125) from those that do otherwise. (Note that his understanding of "competition" is thoroughly Chicago-school, a point for which Austrian theorists have quite properly taken him to task.)

Yet his only ground for this latter opposition is merely that government agencies can't _tell_ which are which. Some corporate mergers, he says, may actually increase efficiency. Well, what about those that don't? Is he opposed in principle to such "inefficient" mergers? Would it be okay if the government stepped in to kill a merger that _was_ clearly "inefficient" by Epstein's standards? Or does he think there would be something morally wrong with outlawing certain uses of people's justly acquired property merely because somebody can think of a more "efficient" use?

Unfortunately Epstein's consequentialist approach prevents him from giving the standard libertarian answer. It seems that, for him, the rights of property and trade are dependent not merely on their promotion of "happiness" but, more specifically, on their service to the aggregate good -- where, most significantly, this "good" is apparently defined quite independently of justice.

So I have to knock off one star for inadequate moral foundations. But don't let that stop you from reading the book: Epstein's cost-benefit approach is solid as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough.

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Jayfred
Not recommended.
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017
I found his ideas for changing the system to be boring.

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W H Goodwin
Uses and Abuses by Laws in Society
Reviewed in Canada on September 8, 2015
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On the cover of this book, the eminent Professor of Law, Richard A. Epstein (RAE) writes: " The government works best when it establishes the rules of the road, not when it seeks to determine the composition of the traffic". Above that is, I think, the book's thesis which states: " ...Regulation takes certain elements from the owner's bundle of rights and transfers them to the state, where they again fall prey to the same difficulties that arose when central planning was defended on a grand scale". Actually, central planning was promoted and promulgated throughout the Cold War from the time of Stalin. For those of us who lived through that time, and worked in the private sector, Socialism, and the promise of Socialism has been a total failure and the latter, a fraud perpetrated by politicians and bureaucrats for their own self aggrandizement, and perpetrated by Unions, especially Public Service Unions, the latter being the consummate means of securing their own fortune and power by becoming our masters through actual rule.
Fortunately for the reader, RAE manages to subdue his passions (whereas this reviewer frequently doesn't), and it makes his books appreciated by all readers wishing enlightenment on the way forward out of the clutches of the present 'soft tyrannies' which have resulted in the political, social, economic and constitutional turmoil of most if not all nations, including those of America and Canada, not to mention those of Europe.
In the preface, RAE writes that with this book, he "hopes to lay bare some of the foundational difficulties in the modern law for readers without specialized legal training and experience....It is a book about legal doctrine, and about social structures and the incentives that these legal doctrines help create".
Throughout the book, RAE exhibits real knowledge of the history of law, beginning with the Bible (although not referenced as such), but acknowledges the impact that our Judeo / Christian religions and theologies have had on our laws and in references to the need for best individual behaviour. Moses was the first to declare that religion has to do with one's conduct in every sphere of life, for example: worship, civil & criminal law, neighbourliness, health and cleanliness. Because Christianity infested the Roman Empire long before its acceptance as the official state religion of Rome by the Emperor Constantine (c.324 A. D.), it was incorporated into the operations of those imperial dominions, helping to form the foundations of democracy and the rule of the Common Law, which were firmly in place by the time James I was crowned the King of England. The Common Law emanates from the people through catalogs of standing decisions from previous trials in all actions, in the laws of property, contract, tort, negligence, nuisance, and procedure, et cetera.
On the other hand, more and more statutes have been crafted by governments ostensibly to redress some "new wrong", with an ulterior motive of growing a bureaucracy, where none had previously existed.RAE tells us that in most cases, the common Law works better than the regulation, and why.
RAE also demonstrates a knowledge of Economics (Classical) and its importance in the framework of the workings of laws and regulations. RAE quotes such economics philosophers as Frederick Hayek and John Locke among others.
From these bases, RAE then informs us how to cut through the complexity, and then, how to develop simple rules, discussing autonomy & property; Contract; Torts, Necessity, Coordination and Just Compensation, Labour, employment discrimination, Professional Liability; Product Liability law, the Corporation, Environmental Protection and Private Property.
Lawyers, Law students and those who may be exposed to legal questions in the course of their work (including politicians) should certainly read this book. RAE describes what was; what is; what works; what doesn't, and so much more. I highly recommend this book as a permanent part of anyone's library!

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Uses and Abuses by Laws in Society