Oct 15, 2020
David
Friedman on Legal Systems Very Different from Ours: A brief survey
of a range of legal system, past and present, from Imperial China
and Periclean Athens to modern Amish and Romany.
David
Friedman is an academic economist with a doctorate in physics
recently retired from spending the previous twenty-three years
teaching in a law school. His first book, The Machinery of Freedom:
Guide to a Radical Capitalism, was published in 1973 and includes a
description of how a society with property rights and without
government might function. There as elsewhere, he offers a
consequentialist defense of libertarianism.
His most
recent non-fiction book is Legal Systems Very Different from Ours,
covering systems from Periclean Athens through modern Amish and
Romany. He is also the author of three novels, one commercially
published and two self-published, and, with his wife, a
self-published medieval and renaissance cookbook and a larger
self-published book related to their hobby of historical
recreation.
Much of
his published work, including journal articles, essays, drafts of
forthcoming work and the full text of several books, can be read on
his web page: https://www.daviddfriedman.com