Richard A Epstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 992334 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard A Epstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard A |
| FAMILY NAME | Epstein |
| SIGNATURE | EPSTEIN R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6624-7311 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Nudges, preferences and competences
For all their differences, the two rival theories of human behavior have many unfortunate similarities. Standard rational choice theory posits that individuals use rational techniques to pick ends that meet their set of private preferences. Modern theories of behavioral economics point to systematic deviations from those principles. Both approaches assume that all preferences are individually based. However, the evolutionary principle of inclusiv…
The classical liberal version of labor law
In this Article, I contest on both theoretical and empirical grounds the progressive agenda, as represented by Hanoch Dagan, that seeks to advance the unionization movement in the name of individual autonomy and property. Theoretically, the Article shows that the common-law account of autonomy, which stresses freedom of action from external constraints involving the use or threat of force, provides the best analytical framework, one that undermin…
Development and validation of a predictive risk model for runaway among youth in child welfare
Rules and reasons, public and private on the use and limits of simple rules 25 years later
Property Rights
This paper explores the relationship between private and common property. It starts with the state of nature, works its way through Roman law, and finishes with a discussion of the application of these principles in a modern context. It explains how the intensification of property use often leads to the need for a public trust doctrine for common pool assets, and explains why long and skinny assets have single dedicated uses, chiefly for communic…
Liability
This brief entry identifies the key choices of any tort system. The first question asks whether any given harm is “cognizable” at all. Typically physical injuries and interferences with advantageous relations by force or fraud fall into that category. Purely competitive injuries do not. Compensating for the former loss advances overall social welfare; for the latter does not. The entry then compares the desirability of strict liability and neglig…
Assessing safety culture in child welfare
The Protection of Liberty, Property, and Equality
This article discusses areas that involve political issues, which contain ‘preferred freedoms’ or ‘suspect classifications’ that attract higher standards of review. The economic and property interests that are subject to some key exceptions are also discussed. The article traces the pattern of judicial review as it applies to political, moral, and social issues, and moves on to the parallel discussions for matters of economic liberty and private …
Predictors of residential placement following a psychiatric crisis episode among children and youth in state custody
This study examined the extent and correlates of entry into residential care among 603 children and youth in state custody who were referred to psychiatric crisis services. Overall, 27% of the sample was placed in residential care within 12 months after their 1st psychiatric crisis screening. Among the children and youth placed in residential care, 51% were so placed within 3 months of their 1st crisis screening, with an additional 22% placed bet…
Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act
Zoning
of political theory turns on setting the right interaction of market and political institutions.1 Markets rest upon the twin institutions of private property and freedom of contract. The former allows all individuals the exclusive possession, use, and disposition of particular resources, such as land or chattels; the latter structures the transfer of human and tangible resources by hire, sale, lease, or partnership. Property rights both separate …
The Not So Minimum Content of Natural Law
This article examines Hart’s claim that it is possible to identify a core set of moral principles that constitute the minimum content of natural law. It argues that there is no reason to link natural law solely to self-preservation when its principles could be extended to maximize social welfare. The article then shows how these so-called minimum rules of property, contract, and tort have in fact large generative powers that allow them to explain…
Privacy, Publication, and the First Amendment
Richard A. Epstein, Privacy, Publication, and the First Amendment: The Dangers of First Amendment Exceptionalism, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 5, Symposium: Cyberspace and Privacy: A New Legal Paradigm? (May, 2000), pp. 1003-1047
Subversive Thoughts on Freedom and the Common Good
Richard Epstein is a rare and forceful voice against the conventional academic wisdom of our time. Legal scholarship of the past few decades overwhelmingly supports more government regulation and more power for the courts, partly in order to control businesses for environmental and other reasons, but more broadly in hopes of achieving egalitarian outcomes along the famous lines of race, gender, and class. Epstein is deeply skeptical that any of t…
The World We Are Losing
Roles and Non-Unique Definites
Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2000)
The silicon valley sentinel - observer
No abstract available
The Promise and Pitfalls of Simple Rules
The right set of simple rules
In Simple Rules for a Complex World, I outlined a set of legal rules that facilitate just and efficient social interactions among individuals. Frederick Schauer's critique of my book ignores the specific implications of my system in favor of a general critique of simplicity that overlooks the dangers to liberty when complex rules confer vast discretion on public figures. He also does not refer to the nonlibertarian features of my system that allo…
United States
The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888-1910
Journal Article The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888–1910 Get access Ely James W., The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888–1910. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. xii, 248 pp. $49.95. Richard A. Epstein Richard A. Epstein The University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 1996, Pages 109–110, …
A New Constitutionalism
The Harm Principle - And How It Grew
Bargaining with the State
Forbidden Grounds
Assessing safety culture in child welfare
The right set of simple rules
In Simple Rules for a Complex World, I outlined a set of legal rules that facilitate just and efficient social interactions among individuals. Frederick Schauer's critique of my book ignores the specific implications of my system in favor of a general critique of simplicity that overlooks the dangers to liberty when complex rules confer vast discretion on public figures. He also does not refer to the nonlibertarian features of my system that allo…
Development and validation of a predictive risk model for runaway among youth in child welfare
Privacy, Publication, and the First Amendment
Richard A. Epstein, Privacy, Publication, and the First Amendment: The Dangers of First Amendment Exceptionalism, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 5, Symposium: Cyberspace and Privacy: A New Legal Paradigm? (May, 2000), pp. 1003-1047
The Harm Principle - And How It Grew
Forbidden Grounds
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council
Although anticipated before its arrival, last term's decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council ' has been rightly regarded as anticlimactic. To be sure, the decision represents something of a high water mark in takings jurisprudence, for a six justice majority of the Court2 allowed that some restrictions on land use might in principle be caught by the Takings Clause. But what the Court gave with one hand, it took away with the other. Ju…
Legal Education and the Politics of Exclusion
In economic affairs the social advantages of competition are least apparent to disappointed competitors. Domestic firms call for protection against low price imports: Let there be tariffs and import quotas. Skilled workers lobby for protection against low wage rivals: Let there be minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, and collective bargaining. Businesses work overtime to keep out new rivals: Let there be exclusionary zoning and licensing. Pitte…
Advocacy versus Analysis in Assessing Employment Discrimination Law
The Consumption and Loss of Personal Property under the Internal Revenue Code
This Article examines the effects that the consumption and loss of personal property 1 should have upon the determination of taxable income.The provisions of the Internal Revenue Code material to this inquiry are few in number and simple in form.The Code's general rule states that personal, living, and family expenses are not deductible from gross income,' whereas deductions may be taken for the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred in…
Incorporating Recent Political Theory into the Social Studies Curriculum
Teaching Thought Control to Secondary School Students
The Death of Contract
The Next Generation of Legal Scholarship
Modern Products Liability Law
A Theory of Strict Liability
Takings
If legal scholar Richard Epstein is right, then the New Deal is wrong, if not unconstitutional. Epstein develops a coherent normative theory that permits us to distinguish between permissible takings for public use and impermissible ones. He then examines a wide range of government regulations and taxes under a single comprehensive theory.
II The morality of scientists
Labor Law and the Employment Market
Luck
John Donne's song was hardly written in the tradition of political philosophy, but it has a good deal to say about the theme of luck, both good and bad, which I want to address. There is no doubt but that bad luck has bad consequences for the persons who suffer from it. If there were a costless way in which the consequences of bad luck could be spread across everyone in society at large, without increasing the risk of its occurrence, then most of…
Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust
Richard A. Epstein, Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust, The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, The Bill of Rights in the Welfare State: A Bicentennial Symposium (Winter, 1992), pp. 41-89
Advocacy versus Analysis in Assessing Employment Discrimination Law
Discrimination and Law
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council
Although anticipated before its arrival, last term's decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council ' has been rightly regarded as anticlimactic. To be sure, the decision represents something of a high water mark in takings jurisprudence, for a six justice majority of the Court2 allowed that some restrictions on land use might in principle be caught by the Takings Clause. But what the Court gave with one hand, it took away with the other. Ju…
Legal Education and the Politics of Exclusion
In economic affairs the social advantages of competition are least apparent to disappointed competitors. Domestic firms call for protection against low price imports: Let there be tariffs and import quotas. Skilled workers lobby for protection against low wage rivals: Let there be minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, and collective bargaining. Businesses work overtime to keep out new rivals: Let there be exclusionary zoning and licensing. Pitte…
Altruism
If altruism were universal, then it would be an unambiguous good that overcomes narrow impulses of self-interest. But often altruism is selective and thus leads to an intensification of strife across racial or ethnic lines. Political institutions must therefore take into account the dual nature of altruism and beware of altruistic justifications for any excessive concentration of state power. Similarly, analysts must be aware that many informal e…
Forbidden Grounds
Forbidden Grounds
Introduction
Fads and fashions in legal history are often very difficult to predict. Legal history in America, for example, is now heavily weighted to the study of American law and American institutions. The assumed dominance of English common law in the American Courts, which was very much a nineteenth century fixture, waned somewhat between 1900 and the end of World War II. During the past 50 years, the decline has been still sharper. With the notable excep…
For A Bramwell Revival
Journal Article For A Bramwell Revival Get access Richard A. Epstein Richard A. Epstein James Parker Hall Professor of Law *The University of Chicago. I have written this article at the request of David Abraham and Anita Ramasastry, both of whom independently divined my affection of the late Baron Bramwell. I should like to thank Isaac Barchas for his research assistance, and his careful reading of the manuscript. Search for other works by this a…
A New Constitutionalism
The Harm Principle - And How It Grew
Bargaining with the State
The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888-1910
Journal Article The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888–1910 Get access Ely James W., The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller 1888–1910. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. xii, 248 pp. $49.95. Richard A. Epstein Richard A. Epstein The University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 1996, Pages 109–110, …
Political science (34 works) · Law (28 works) · Law and economics (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Economics (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Business (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Politics (9 works)