Simple Rules for a Complex World

by Richard A. Epstein

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 naivete. 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.

Genres: Law, Politics, Economics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology

378 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer at The University of Chicago Law School.

Epstein started his legal career at the University of Southern California, where he taught from 1968 to 1972. He served as Interim Dean from February to June, 2001.

He received an LLD, hc, from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School, also since 1983. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991 to 2001.

His books include The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less Is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006). Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago 2003): Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 7th ed. 2000); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard 1995); Bargaining with the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press 1980). He has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects.

He has taught courses in civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.

Reviews

[Nick Geiser · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Simple Rules" is Richard Epstein's overview of legal theory for non-lawyers. It presents a theory of law animated by a basic idea of a tradeoff between administrative costs and incentive effects in a legal system.

The ideal legal system minimizes administrative costs while maximizing incentives for welfare-improving interaction. Epstein's theory starts from a presumption of simplicity. The simplest legal system--complete lawlessness--has zero administrative costs. From this starting point, legal rules are introduced if their benefits to welfare exceed their administrative costs. These administrative costs, importantly, include the costs of error and mistake, which gives transparent and predictable rules advantage over complex ones. The resulting theory organized around six basic concepts (autonomy, property, contract, tort, necessity, and just compensation) that resembles the common law and justifies a classical liberal state.

There are clear affinities between Epstein's argument and F.A. Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty", especially Hayek's claim that a modern economy requires clear and simple rules. This counter-intuitive but far-reaching idea does most of Epstein's analytical work. In general, an economy or society with greater degrees of complexity must increasingly rely on its particular members to coordinate their own activities. This reliance demands rules sufficiently simple that ordinary individuals can depend upon them.

[Emil O. W. Kirkegaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really my area of expertise but this is a kind of general defense of limited government by attacking negative consequences of complicated rules.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saw this in Charles Murray’s What it Means to Be a Libertarian. Epstein’s six rules are: 1) Self-ownership/autonomy 2) First possession/homestead 3) Voluntary exchange 4) Protection against aggression by tort 5) Limited liability for necessity 6) Takings of property for public use with just compensation. The basic assumption is that nobody be made worse off from a transaction and those involved be better off (Pareto equilibrium) since Epstein justifies this on largely consequentialist grounds and common law principles. The most interesting rule is compensation for takings which would apply to all actions by government beyond the police power including taxes and regulation, which would have to be compensated in kind by providing general services as in genuine public goods or compensation in cash. That’s actually key to Nozick’s justification of the minimal state. Hardcore libertarians may object to this positive authority of government via taxes and takings but is not carte blanche to regulate for any purpose whatsoever but to prevent a harm or in exchange for a legal benefit for public necessity.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I especially appreciate about Epstein is the he can argue so clearly for his principled approach, without having to resort to ranting about specific examples. Richard Epstein explains how simple concepts of law have been subverted by complex rule-making, resulting in economic inefficiencies driven by ambiguity, defensive tactics, and poor allocation. x: "But how seriously can one take a legal system that devotes more of its intellectual ingenuity to identifying and correcting market failures resulting from asymmetrical and imperfect information in employment than to containing violence on the street?" The 6 simple rules are: Individual self-ownership, 2. first possession, 3. contract, 4. torts, 5. necessity, coordination, and just compensation, and 6. take and pay (and the 7th for tax law would be "flat tax").

[Sam Reaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the health care bill runs to nearly two thousand pages, it's time to revisit this 1995 classic. Epstein, a University of Chicago legal scholar, argues against the idea that the complexity of modern life requires ever more legislation and expanding armies of lawyers. He shows how a renewed emphasis on a few key time-tested principles (property rights, contracts, torts, etc.) could cut through the thicket of rules that imposes enormous administrative costs on society and benefits only lawyers

[Charles David Edinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Professor Epstein's most interesting works, and all are well worth reading several times. This volume makes the case for simplified legal standards and eliminating the needlessly complex system currently being utilized by the Obama Administration to choke the American economy, and especially small businesses, and to give government a frighteningly intrusive and control over every aspect of our lives. Epstein makes an airtight case for a much simpler and more effective system of governance in America. Epstein is right!!! CDE

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, coherent legal framework defended in depth. Well worth the read, although I found it dense and sometimes difficult to follow with my limited legal background. I'd like to read it again after a year or two of law school--I'll probably get far more from it.

[Ari B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read that explores the way our laws are written and how they can enforce injustice or provide accessibility to understanding our society.

Is our abundant legal system helping or hurting our society?

[Craig Bolton]

Simple Rules for a Complex World by Richard A. Epstein (1995)

[Brandon Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was VERY heavy, even for me. But it was the most law-oriented book I've read, and so I learned a lot.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six simple premises to simplify current legal system; a libertarian perspective - autonomy, ownership, contract, keep-off(tort), take & pay