This book breaks with several traditions of legal scholarship. Rather than focus on one topic, it seeks to show how broad the application of economic analysis of law can be. Rather than explain existing knowledge, it seeks to show how new methodologies develop. Rather than convey the safety of stability, it seeks comfort in the reality of change. My hope is that it will serve as an adequate introduction for ambitious readers who are eager to follow the bright tradition of innovative legal scholarship.

I hope that this book, which is to a significant extent the result of this approach, helps to orient new jurists in an increasingly complex field. Several voices within the legal academy readily use new methods, expressing with deed their belief that the law of diminishing returns must apply to methodological efforts as well. This book owes much to those pioneers, too numerous to count. The breadth of this book cannot help but force a brevity that is unfair to every one of its topics.

The overall shape of this book, however, is due to the extraordinary editor of Cambridge University Press, Finola O'Sullivan. She provided significant guidance toward an exciting target. Also very significant was the help of her colleagues at Cambridge University Press, John Berger and Scott Parris. Unusually deep is my gratitude to my dear colleague Daniel Cole at Indiana University Law School–Indianapolis. Also voluminous was the help of Andrew Klein and Stephen Utz.