Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice

Anarchy and the Law assembles in one volume the most important classic and contemporary studies exploring and debating non-state legal and political systems, especially involving the tradition of natural law and private contracts.

Should markets and contracts provide law, and can the rule of law itself be understood as a private institution? Are the state and its police powers benign societal forces, or are they a system of conquest, authoritarianism, occupation, and exploitation?

From the early works of Gustave de Molinari, Edmund Burke, Voltairine de Cleyre, Benjamin Tucker, David Lipscomb, and Lysander Spooner to the contemporary thinking of Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Anthony De Jasay and Bruce Benson, Anarchy and the Law features the key studies exploring and debating the efficacy of individual choice and markets versus the shortfalls of coercive government power and bureaucracy. In so doing, the book also features debates involving Roderick Long’s argument against a nationalized military and Robert Nozick’s critique of stateless legal systems, as well as the work of such scholars as Nobel Laureate economist Douglass North, Tyler Cowen, Robert Ellickson, Randall Holcombe, Randy Barnett, Barry Weingast, Terry Anderson, Andrew Rutten, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, and others.

Whereas liberals and conservatives argue in favor of political constraints, Anarchy and the Law examines whether to check against abuse, government power must be replaced by a social order of self-government based on contracts.

Edward P. Stringham is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute; Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Economic Organizations and Innovation and Deputy Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment, Trinity College; former President and Director of Research and Education at the American Institute for Economic Research; former President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education; and a member of the Board of Advisors for both the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation and Center on Culture and Civil Society at the Independent Institute.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, and he has been Lloyd V. Hackley Endowed Chair for Capitalism and Free Enterprise Studies at Fayetteville State University; Associate Professor of Business Economics in the Area of Energy, Economics and Law in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University; and Associate Professor of Economics at San Jose State University.