Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things...

The late Justice Antonin Scalia reshaped statutory interpretation. Thanks to him, the Supreme Court has become far more textualist. Nonetheless, Justice Scalia never persuaded the Court to adopt his textualist ideal that “the text is the law.” In some cases, the Court still gives greater...

This reader in the history of economic thought challenges the assumption that today's prevailing economic theories are always the most appropriate ones. As Leland Yeager has pointed out, unlike the scientists of the natural sciences, economists provide their ideas largely to politicians and...