Writing, Law and kingship in old Babylonian Mesopotamia

Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization - home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code ...

On sunspots

Galileo's telescopic discoveries, and especially his observation of sunspots, caused great debate in an age when the heavens were thought to be perfect and unchanging. Christoph Scheiner, a Jesuit mathematician, argued that sunspots were planets or moons crossing in front of the Sun. Galileo ...

The nazi symbiosis

human genetics and politics in the Third Reich

The Faustian bargain - in which an individual or group collaborates with an evil entity in order to obtain knowledge, power, or material gain - is perhaps best exemplified by the alliance between world- renowned human geneticists and the Nazi state. Under the swastika, German scientists descended ...

Medieval philosophy redefined

the development of cenoscopic science, AD 354 to 1644 (from the birth of Agustine to the death of Poinsot)

With "Medieval Philosophy Redefined" John Deely provides an in-depth, original history of medieval philosophy, tracing a common thread that coherently unifies and defines what he calls 'the Latin Age' - which reaches unbroken from the fifth-century work of Augustine through to the seventeenth-century work of Poinsot ...

The structures of wages

an international comparison

Eds. Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw. The distribution of income, the rate of pay raises, and the mobility of employees is crucial to understanding labor economics. Although research abounds on the distribution of wages across individuals in the economy, wage differentials within firms remain ...

Milton Friedman on economics

selected papers

Afterword by Gary S. Becker.Upon his death in the autumn of 2006, Milton Friedman was lauded as "the grandmaster of free-market economic theory in the postwar era" by the "New York Times" and "the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth ...

Colonial encounters in Ancient Iberia

phoenician, greek, and indigenous relations

Edited by Michael Dietler and Carolina López-Ruiz. Part I Theoretical Issues and Frameworks 1 Colonial Encounters in Iberia and the Western Mediterranean: An Exploratory Framework Michael Dietler 2 Colonial Relations and Social Change in Iberia (Seventh to Third Centuries BC) Joan Sanmartí Part II New ...

Uncommon sense

economic insights, from marrage to terrorism

On December 5, 2004, the still-developing blogosphere took one of its biggest steps toward mainstream credibility, as Nobel Prize - winning economist Gary S. Becker and renowned jurist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner announced the formation of the Becker-Posner Blog. In no time at all ...

The perils of global legalism

The arrival of the Obama administration has led to expectations, both here and abroad, that in the coming years the United States will increasingly adhere to international law - a position that many believe is both ethically necessary and in the nation's best interest. The ...

Madison's Nightmare

how executive power threatens american democracy

In recent years, the Bush administration's ambitious - even breathtaking - claims of unilateral executive authority have properly raised concerns among constitutional scholars, civil libertarians, and ordinary citizens alike. But Bush's attempts to assert his power are only the latest development in a near-thirty-year assault ...

The economic approach to human behavior

Since his pioneering application of economic analysis to racial discrimination, Gary S. Becker has shown that an economic approach can provide a unified framework for understanding all human behavior. In a highly readable selection of essays Becker applies this approach to various aspects of human ...

The private abuse of the public interest

markets myths and policy muddles

Despite George W. Bush#s professed opposition to big government, federal spending has increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration, and demands on government have continued to grow. Why? Lawrence Brown and Lawrence Jacobs show that conservative efforts to ...

The complete anti-federalist

"The Complete Anti-Federalist", first published in 1981, contains an unprecedented collection of all the significant pamphlets, newspaper articles and letters, essays, and speeches that were written in opposition to the Constitution during the ratification debate. Herbert J. Storing's work includes introductions to each entry ...

The medieval origins of the legal profession

cabobists, civilians, and courts

In the aftermath of sixth-century barbarian invasions, the legal profession that had grown and flourished during the Roman Empire vanished. Nonetheless, professional lawyers suddenly reappeared in Western Europe seven hundred years later during the 1230s when church councils and public authorities began to impose a ...

Punishment and culture

From the chain gang to the electric chair, the problem of how to deal with criminals has long been debated. What explains this concern with getting punishment right? And why do attitudes toward particular punishments change radically over time? In addressing these questions, Philip Smith ...

The hollow hope

can courts bring about social change?

In follow-up studies, dozens of reviews, and even a book of essays evaluating his conclusions, Gerald N. Rosenberg's critics - not to mention his supporters - have spent nearly two decades debating the arguments he first put forward in "The Hollow Hope". With this substantially expanded ...

Law and capitalism

what corporate crises reveal about legal systems and economic development around the world

Recent high-profile corporate scandals#such as those involving Enron in the United States, Yukos in Russia, and Livedoor in Japan#demonstrate challenges to legal regulation of business practices in capitalist economies. Setting forth a new analytic framework for understanding these problems, Law and Capitalism examines ...

Constitutional conscience

the moral dimension of judicial decision

While many recent observers have accused American judges - especially Supreme Court justices - of being too driven by politics and ideology, others have argued that judges are justified in using their positions to advance personal views. Advocating a different approach - one that eschews ideology but still ...

Financial markets volatility and performance in emerging markets

Eds. Sebastian Edwards, Márcio G.P. Garcia. Capital mobility is a double-edged sword for emerging economies, as governments must weigh the benefits of investment against the potential economic costs and political consequences of currency crises, devaluations, and instability. "Financial Markets Volatility and Performance in Emerging ...

Castles, battles and bombs

how economics explains military history

From the walls of Troy to the sands of Iraq, humans have devoted staggering resources to the art and science of war. Yet while military history has long studied the economics of conflict, until now there have been few attempts to apply the principles of ...