preface

Part 1: Lure

Chapter 1: Pre- and Post-mortem Perspectives
Chapter 2: The Concept of Efficiency
Chapter 3: Marginal Thinking
Chapter 4 Sole Owner
Chapter 5 Least-Cost Avoiders
Chapter 6 Administrative Costs
Chapter 7: The Land
Chapter 8 Course Summary

Part 2: Trust, Cooperation, and Other Issues for Multiple Actors

Chapter 9: Agent_co-authored by Eric Posner
Chapter 10: The Prisoner's Dilemma
Chapter 11 Public Goods
Chapter 12 Deer Hunting
Chapter 13: Chicken Game
Chapter 14 Waterfall
Chapter 15: The Paradox of Voting
Chapter 16: The Restrained Market, co-authored by Sol Revmore

Part 3 Law

Chapter 17 Rules and Standards
Chapter 18: Slippery Slopes, co-authored by Eugene Voloch
Chapter 19: Acoustic Separation
Chapter 20: Rules of Property Rights and Rules of Liability
Based on Chapter 21

Part 4 Psychology

Chapter 22 Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: The Endowment Effect and Related Concepts
Chapter 23: Hindsight Bias
Chapter 24 Frame Effect
Chapter 25: The Anchor Effect
Chapter 26: Self-Enhancing Bias (Focusing on Attribution Errors)

Part 5 Proof Problem

Chapter 27 Estimation
Chapter 28 Standards of Proof
Chapter 29: The Law of Multiplication
Chapter 30 Base Rate
Chapter 31: Value and Markets

The law hates waste, and judges hate waste.

The one thing that those who deal with the law must remember is that 'the law hates waste.'
Legal common sense is always based on concerns about waste or a sense of cost and benefit.
For example, let's say a cow wanders down the road and collides with a car.
When the car is damaged, the driver files a lawsuit against the cattle rancher to recover the cost of repairs.
The owner is responsible for failing to prevent the cow from leaving the property.
But will such lawsuits actually succeed? The author says a lawyer would simply consider whether the rancher exercised reasonable care to prevent the accident.
Here, ‘worthiness’ does not mean ‘perfection.’
The court ruled that even if a rancher installs barbed wire, it is inevitable that a cow will escape and cause a collision, and in this case, the rancher is not liable for compensation.
How can this result be achieved?

The most important criterion in answering this question is 'waste'.
The only way to prevent any cattle from escaping is to put up a high fence around the ranch and have guards, but that costs a lot of money.
Even if this could prevent accidents, it is difficult to support because it is so costly.
Installing barbed wire, which costs much less than that, is sufficient because it provides considerable protection even if an unexpected accident occurs.
That is, in such cases, the judge may conclude that it is best to leave things as they are, considering not only the costs to the victim but also the total costs to society as a whole.
Ultimately, this driver will have to bear the loss himself.
The principle is not to burden the ranch owner because there is nothing more he can do.

The author immediately presents similar examples repeatedly.
There is a ten-foot high fence around the cricket field.
If a ball hit by someone goes over the fence and injures a neighbor, can the neighbor sue the owner of the field for damages? The neighbor claims that raising the fence just five feet higher would have prevented the ball from coming over.
This sounds reasonable at first glance.
However, legal scholars view this from a limited perspective.
And he decides that this resident's way of thinking is wrong.
Because most of the benefits of a 15-foot high wall are already considered to be achieved by a 10-foot high wall.
The cost of not raising the fence by five feet is less than the cost of one in a million balls jumping over the fence and causing injury, so the owner concludes that no further action is necessary.

This book is not concerned with resolving arguments or disputes between individual parties.
One of the values ​​of law is to find the most efficient way to solve a problem and then encourage others to use that method.
For example, if it is beneficial to property rights to not waste the efforts of those who develop and manage land or other resources, then contracts are beneficial in that they transfer those rights to those who will best utilize them. If, for some reason, a sale cannot be made, this result can be considered wasteful.
The author's view of society as a whole and of lawyers is simple, clear, and resolute.

ㆍNo one advocates waste.
ㆍRules function to lower people's costs before they are put in a certain position.
ㆍEfficiency can be precisely defined as the elimination of waste.
ㆍMaking efficiency a legal goal is controversial.
However, this can be said to be a modified utilitarianism that aims to maximize everyone's wealth rather than utility, and utilitarianism is controversial.

To avoid misunderstanding, let me add that the tools in this book do not presuppose that efficiency is the primary goal of the legal system, or that efficiency is always important.
However, it's almost always interesting to point out that some decisions cost more than others or cause more harm than good, and even if everyone agrees that other things are important, the logic in this book often proves decisive.
The author goes a step further and emphasizes that what is important is the way the question is asked.
When asking questions, avoid targeting something generic or universal.
For example, when a bank robber takes a customer hostage and threatens the bank employee to hand over money, the employee's response should be based on the assumption of a "marginal" bank and a "marginal" robber.
Although it may be criticized as being unrealistic, the purpose of legal rules is to reduce the execution of acts within limits.
Therefore, for anyone living under a legal system, it is important to know how to ask the right limiting questions.

When we think liminal, rather than simply recognizing all the costs of our actions and then ceasing to act, we can decide for ourselves whether to take the next alternative action.
In other words, the law is not meant to induce people to do or not to do something, but to make people choose alternatives and to make them alert when disputes arise.
The examples presented here are just a few.
This book has been praised by numerous law school professors as “exceptional” and “a clear narrative that reveals a remarkable intellectual structure.”