This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their social desirability. Five basic subject areas are covered. The first is legal liability for harm. Here we...

We analyze optimal sentence length for recurring crimes in the face of adjudication errors. We develop an infinite-horizon model where offenders are habitual---they repeat crimes whenever free. If apprehended, criminals may be wrongfully acquitted. Similarly, innocent persons may be apprehended...

While much legal research has examined the problem of court delays and backlogs, the link between the prosecutor' s incentives to press charges and their subsequent effect on the congestion in the criminal justice system has remained largely overlooked. To understand the implications of such...