Barry Weingast on Law

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2014

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

Barry Weingast, professor of political science at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the nature of law. Weingast takes issue with some of the standard views of law, and proposes a better way to understand law. The two discuss the fundamental principles of law, how it can emerge in a decentralized way to resolve disputes over property and other commercial and social interactions. Examples include Iceland, Ancient Greece, and California during the gold rush. Also considered are how laws coordinate expectations and the way that social pressure can be used to enforce law in a decentralized fashion.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:16.0	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done
0:23.1	going back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:27.9	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.2	Today is August 4, 2014, and my guest is Barry Winegast, the Wardsea Krebs Family Professor
0:38.6	of Political Science at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
0:44.0	Very welcome back to Econ Talk.
0:45.6	Thank you.
0:46.6	Our topic for today is law.
0:49.0	What is it and where it comes from?
0:51.0	First, we all think we know what the law is.
0:52.6	It's against the law to break in your neighbor's house, cheat under taxes.
0:55.8	But as we've often discussed here, Edecon Talk, the law is often thought of as well.
1:00.6	That's legislation.
1:01.6	That's stuff the government does.
1:03.1	That tells us what we can do, what we can't do.
1:05.8	But what we're going to talk about today is that that's not all the laws, and sometimes
1:09.2	that's not law at all.
	...

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