[Sca-cooks] Visiting New York

[david friedman]

>At 08:25 PM 8/31/2003 -0700, David wrote:
>>>not exactly enroute...but we could meet for lunch in new haven. 
>>>only place i know near campus is a falafel place, oddly enough...
>>>
>>>Hm, if we abolish criminal law, what exactly would we do...i 
>>>vaguely remember admin law, but i dont think that applies...grin
>>
>>
>>Tort law. Tort and criminal are two ways of doing essentially the 
>>same thing--imposing costs on people who do bad things to other 
>>people, in order that they won't.
>>
>>For a real world example of pure tort, consider saga period Iceland.
>
>
>Tort law seems an unsatisfactory method of dealing with particularly 
>serious offenses.  I used to defend capital murder cases and can't 
>really see a tort action as being of much use in dealing with those 
>folks.
>
>Simon Sinneghe
>Briaroak, Summits, An Tir

Iceland managed it for about a third of a millenium. Of course, their 
tort law wasn't identical to ours. The penalty for not paying damages 
was that you got outlawed, at which point it was legal to kill you 
and tortious to defend you. In practice, that almost always meant 
that if you got outlawed you left.

If you are interested in a much more detailed discussion, take a look 
at Chapter 18 of my _Law's Order_. Also Chapter 17 for the Icelandic 
system. The book (a late draft in HTML) is webbed at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Laws_Order_draft/laws_order_ToC.htm

And for a description of a much more private system--one with law but 
without government--see my first book, _The Machinery of Freedom_. A 
few chapters, including Chapter 29, which sketches the institutions I 
am imagining, are webbed at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Contents.html

But I think this is drifting pretty far off topic for the list.
-- 
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/