Simple Rules for a Complex World.

• Author: Feldman, Heidi Li

INTRODUCTION

Despite its title, Richard Epstein's(1) latest book is actually quite intricate. In Simple Rules for a Complex World, Epstein makes the ostensibly straightforward claim that the American legal system should consist of only simple rules. Then, Epstein submits a list that in his opinion fits the bill.

Epstein's position is more complicated than might be suggested by a casual reading of his recommendations for legal reform. Neither his definition of simplicity nor the rules he favors is particularly transparent. Furthermore, the scope of Epstein's argument exceeds the range suggested by the book's explicit aims, which are "to lay bare some of the foundational difficulties in the modern law for readers without any specialized legal training and experience, but with more than a passing interest in the law" (p. ix), and to establish that "[t]here is too much law and too many lawyers" (p. ix). In Simple Rules, Epstein goes beyond clarifying current law and urging that we prune the regulatory state. Ultimately Simple Rules champions a conservative libertarian policy program.

Epstein argues in three steps for seven substantive "universal prescriptions" (p. 22) that would create a libertarian legal regime.(2) First, he maintains that simplicity should be the measure of merit for legal rules. Next, he defines simplicity in utilitarian terms. Finally, Epstein claims that a legal regime consisting of his seven proposed rules would be simpler -- in his sense of the term -- than the current American legal system.

In this review, I focus primarily on the second two steps Epstein takes. The first seems to me to require less attention because, as Epstein's argument amply demonstrates, debating the virtue of simplicity in a legal system turns on what is meant by "simple."

1. EPSTEIN'S CONCEPTION OF SIMPLICITY

   "My purpose in this book," Epstein tells us, "is to develop a set of simple rules capable of handling the most complex set of social relations imaginable, whether in the United States or anywhere else" (p. 21). With this goal, Epstein must invoke a criterion of simplicity. He stipulates that "the cheaper the cost of compliance, the simpler [a] rule is" (p. 25). This conception of simplicity is both more idiosyncratic and less clear than it initially may seem.

   The Epstein simplicity criterion for rules is unusual in its deviation from other common understandings of what it is for a rule or law to be simple. For example, many people would consider a legal rule simple to the extent that ordinary citizens can comprehend it and can anticipate how police and courts would apply it. On this view, a simple rule has a plain meaning, accessible to courts, police, and citizens. Another view of simplicity in rules derives from science and mathematics. Within this tradition simplicity is a matter of brevity and elegance: a rule or law is simple if it can be stated concisely, without caveats or qualifications. Notice that a rule that is simple in this sense may not be simple in the plain-meaning sense. Using terms of art -- or, more pejoratively, jargon -- may make it easier to formulate a succinct rule but also may make that rule's meaning fairly inaccessible to many whom it affects. By the same token, legal rules that fulfill either the plain-meaning or the brevity criterion for simplicity may not meet Epstein's utilitarian criterion. It may be expensive to comply with an easily understood rule or with a concisely stated one. The costs of compliance depend on the content of a rule. Epstein is not unaware of this, and he eventually proposes a set of substantive rules that he claims meet his particular criterion of simplicity. Before we consider these rules, though, Epstein's conception of simplicity merits further investigation.

   Epstein's conception builds a certain kind of utilitarianism into the very definition of simplicity. He intends his utilitarian simplicity criterion to measure the comparative worth of the current American legal regime against any proposed change:

   Relative to the state of nature, any system of laws is complex; so the theme of simplicity would have no independent or normative appeal. Instead, the preference would be for rules that self-consciously maximize human happiness or welfare. Today, however, we are as far removed from the state of nature as can be imagined. Relative to the world as it now operates, simplicity becomes a useful test for deciding whether or not a proposed legal reform will improve human welfare, even if no set of incremental changes could maximize it. [p. 30]

   Note that Epstein does not propose to use his test of simplicity to arrive at the absolutely superior welfare-maximizing regime, or at one such regime if more than one could achieve this epitome. Rather he starts from the position that the current legal regime fails to maximize welfare -- compared to the state of nature -- and proposes that we test any alternative by determining whether it produces overall higher welfare. Even if we were to agree with Epstein that current American law does not create the best of all welfare-maximizing worlds, it is extremely difficult to make the sort of comparative judgments called for by his test.(3)

   Epstein assumes the welfare-maximizing inferiority of any system of state regulation compared to life in the state of nature: "The most simple social organization [is] lawlessness" (p. 33; emphasis added). It is only because we cannot achieve this state that Epstein opts to argue for second-best. Yet, Epstein's initial assumption is rather odd. Certainly at least since Hobbes, theorists have recognized that the problem with the state of nature is precisely that it diminishes human happiness. As Hobbes himself famously put it:

   [D]uring the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man....

   ....In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.(4)

   With these remarks, Hobbes eloquently states the welfarist case for the state of laws rather than the state of nature. I do not know exactly what Epstein means by "rules that self-consciously maximize human happiness or welfare" (p. 30). Although Hobbes does not specify the form or content the laws should take, his examples of the fruits of law suggest that minimalist laws directly requiring people to maximize utility would not suffice to yield such utility-enhancing benefits as agriculture, industry, navigation, engineering, geography, history, art, and so forth. These goods are quite sophisticated. Their production necessitates large measures of cooperation and coordination unlikely to materialize without some fairly specific directives. It is rather implausible to assume that a complex civil society could be realized merely by legislating that citizens should do whatever is necessary to maximize overall utility. Aside from citizens' inability to know which actions would fit the bill, people attempting to comply with such a directive would be thwarted by coordination problems and transaction costs. Epstein recognizes that coordination problems present obstacles to utility maximization (p. 113). He also acknowledges that legal rules can solve such problems (pp. 113-27), but he downplays the magnitude of the obstacles that coordination problems present and implies that private cooperation can overcome many of these problems despite the high transaction costs generally associated with such efforts (pp. 126, 163-93).

   Whatever system of rules would in fact maximize utility, Epstein, like other libertarians, tends to argue that freely contracting parties will bind themselves to the necessary directives without much action on the part of the state. This is exactly the proposition that Hobbes devotes Leviathan to denying. One need not be an ardent Hobbesian to think it unlikely that contract can solve all the cooperation and coordination problems that would interfere with achieving a host of modern welfare-enhancing systems. State-constructed legal structures and regulations make possible the existence of entities ranging from museums to national parks to corporations. Compliance with the laws that make these things possible may cost more than compliance with "rules that self-consciously maximize human happiness or welfare" (p. 30). Although perhaps not: it can be expensive to figure out how to maximize...