My primary academic interests are in the area of law and economics -- specifically the use of Austrian economics and public choice to understand law, politics, and government.

My goal in maintaining this page is to make online materials (chiefly in the classical liberal tradition) easily accessible for my students (past, present and future) and for other interested persons. 

I have recently tuned-up and redesigned this page, with the goal of making it more timely and easier to use -- and thus more inviting to readers. 
The new material begins with Part I, a blogroll.  If a blogger makes his or her homepage clearly available on the blog, he/she does not appear in Part II -- which lists individuals' websites that are content-heavy in the areas indicated.  
Part III is devoted to scholars whose work has significantly influenced my own thinking and who have died during my professional career.  (Judge Bork is the only person listed here I had the good fortune to have as a classroom teacher.)
Part IV offers a set of podcast and video sites in aid of those of you seeking to self-educate.  
Part V links online law journals, Part VI, more journals and magazines, and Part VII collects basic reference sites .
Part VIII is labeled the "Stacks Area" and contains most of the earlier version of this page.  It is largely devoted to online books and articles in law, economics, politics and government.  Part VIII contains its own sub-index.  There is still some duplication between the Stacks Area and Parts I-VII.

Contact info:   205 726-2434
Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, AL  35229  
My web page at the law school includes my bio, institutional photo, and email address.  

Please send along comments, suggestions, warnings about broken links, etc.

Now, on with the show ---

A.  ECONOMICS

    I think economics, like philosophy, cannot be taught to nineteen-year olds.  It is an old man's
    field.  Nineteen-year olds are, most of them, romantics, capable of memorizing and emoting, but
    not capable of thinking coldly in the cost-and-benefit way. . . .  A nineteen-year old has
    intimations of immortality, comes directly from a socialized economy (called a family), and has no
    feel on his pulse for those tragedies of adult life that economists call scarcity and choice.
                                                                -- Donald McCloskey (1992)

A1.  The Basics

     Mankiw's 10 Principles  It doesn't get any more succinct than this.
     Nine fundamental principles of economics  drawn from the classic intro text, "The Economic Way of Thinking"
     Keystone Economic Principles  nine key points from the Powell Economic Education Foundation

     Free Enterprise: The Economics of Cooperation by Dwight Lee
     Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, Dwight Lee & Tawni Ferrarini
These are the two best, short introductions to economic reasoning I know.  An earlier version of the latter is online here, "adapted for Canadian readers."  A summary of "Ten Key Elements of Economics" from Common Sense Economics appeared in the Heritage Foundation's Insider, Spring 2005 (pp. 8-13 of this PDF file).

     The Nature of Man by Michael Jensen & William Meckling 

     Economics for the Citizen -- Ten short introductory essays by the prolific Walter Williams of the George Mason economics department. 

     Economics Internet Library by Walter Antoniotti (with links to other business sites by the same editor)

    Online Library of Liberty's "Intellectual Portrait Series"

     P.J. O'Rourke's C-SPAN interview re his Eat the Rich (1999) 

A2.  The Next Level

     Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (2d ed. 1990) by David Friedman (suitable for college juniors; a terrific resource)
            Friedman's C-SPAN interview re his Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996)
     Introduction to Economic Analysis: The Open Source Introduction to Microeconomics by Preston McAfee (PDF) (used in the intro course at Cal Tech)
     Essential Principles of Economics: A Hypermedia Text (2007) by Roger McCain
     CyberEconomics: An Analysis of Unintended Consequences by Robert Schenk (webbed textbook)
     Economics Interactive Tutorials (courtesy of the U. of S. Carolina School of Public Health)
     Economics in Excel by J. Wilson Mixon, Jr. & Soumaya M. Tohamy
     Managerial Economics by Richard Stanford (webbed textbook)
     Price Theory, a nice website for Steven Landsburg's intermediate textbook
     Tutor2uEconomics (U.K. college entrance materials)
     Russell Roberts's books, The Choice and The Invisible Heart, are described and previewed here.

     Free online course from Carnegie Mellon U: Introductory Economics

     Economics Radio
     Economics at the Idea Channel (links and videos of big name economists)

A3.  History of Economic Thought 

     Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

     Short biographies of free-market theorists (from the Dallas Fed's "Economic Insights" publication)
     Great economists and their times (from the San Francisco Fed)
     Essay on the history of Nobel prize in economics, by chair of selection committee
     Article on Nobel prize in economics (from Minneapolis Fed, 1999)

     Great quotations in economics from Florida State U. and Emory & Henry College  

      Adam Smith, THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (searchable)
      P.J. O'Rourke on The Wealth of Nations (2007) text and video
      Adam Smith Institute (UK)
      Adam Smith -- A Primer, by Eamonn Butler (IEA, 2007)
      The Condensed Wealth of Nations, by Eamonn Butler (Adam Smith Institute, 2011)
      Alan Macfarlane, Adam Smith and the Making of the Modern World (2000)
                from Macfarlane's 2000 book, The Riddle of the Modern World
      Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith by Sam Fleischacker (2004)
      The Relevance of Adam Smith by Robert Hetzel (1976)
      Alan Greenspan, "Adam Smith Memorial Lecture" (2005)
          Another address by Greenspan in the Smithian vein (2004)
      Adam Smith "interview" (1994)
      My links page on the Scottish Enlightenment is here.

     Adam Smith and all that, by John Creedy (2002) (comic relief in PDF)  24 JHET 479 (2002)

     Israel Kirzner, The Economic Point of View: An Essay in the History of Economic Thought (1960, 1976)

     A History of Economic Analysis, by Roger Backhouse (webbed textbook, 1985)
     Downloadable books on the history of economic thought, 1588-1999 (McMaster U.)

     The Secret History of the Dismal Science, by David Levy & Sandra Peart (2001),
            and later installments here.

     Lawrence Boland (Simon Fraser U., many articles and books available for download)

     Wealth of Notions, from the U. of Chicago Alumni magazine, about Chicago Nobelists (2001)
     Arnold Harberger interview (1999)
     George Stigler interview (1989)
     Milton Friedman interview (2000)
     Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics (U. of Chicago)

     Kenneth Arrow on Cowles in the History of Economic Thought (1983)

A5.  Economic Growth / International Economics / Free Trade

     The Candlemakers' Petition, by Frederic Bastiat
     The Case for Free Trade, by Milton & Rose Friedman
     The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, by Russell Roberts (excerpt)
     The Fruits of Free Trade (Dallas Fed 2002 annual report)
     Jagdish Bhagwati's home page (Columbia U. economist, perennial member of Nobel Prize short list)
     International Economics Study Center (textbook & more from Geo Wash U prof; free registration)

A6.  Statistics 

     Resources for Economists on the Internet, courtesy of the American Economic Association
     FedStats.gov, "statistics from more than 100 agencies"
     Economic Reports of the President, 1995-2013 
     National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
     Economic Time Series Page
     Measuring Worth (inflation calculator, successor to How Much Is That?) 

     SurfStat.australia (on-line statistics text)
     The Web Center for Social Research Methods (Cornell)
     Institute for Quantitative Social Science (Harvard)
     The Chance Project (Dartmouth)
     Statistical Assessment Service, critiques media use of statistics
     WebMath (large site, ranging from help for grade schoolers doing their homework, on up) 

     Nassim Taleb's home page
     John Allen Paulos's home page (the author of Innumeracy, and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market)
     Andrew Gelman's statistics blog

      Numerous free online statistics courses from Carnegie Mellon U
      The Joy of Stats -- BBC and Open University course
      Alan Sykes, An Introduction to Regression Analysis (1993)

A7.  Game Theory / Experimental Economics

B.  ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW

    The same persons who cry down Logic will generally warn you against Political Economy.  It is
    unfeeling, they will tell you.  It recognises unpleasant facts.  For my part, the most unfeeling thing
    I know of is the law of gravitation: it breaks the neck of the best and most amiable person without
    scruple, if he forgets for a single moment to give heed to it.  The winds and waves too are very
    unfeeling.  Would you advise those who go to sea to deny then winds and waves -- or to make
    use of them, and find the means of guarding against their dangers?  My advice to you is to study
    the great writers on Political Economy, and hold firmly by whatever in them you find true; and
    depend on it that if you are not selfish or hard-hearted already, Political Economy will not make
    you so.
                                                                -- John Stuart Mill (1867)

     David K. Levine, Is Behavioral Economics Doomed? (2012)

     Richard Epstein's homepage.
            The full text of his 2005 book, Free Markets Under Seige, is available online courtesy of the Hoover Institution.
            His book, Principles for a Free Society, is summarized in his 1998 speech at AEI by the same title.
            His 1995 Reason magazine interview.

      Richard Posner's homepage.        
            The Becker-Posner Blog  (2004-2014)
            He was interviewed by Reason magazine in April 2001.  
            In 2002, Posner allowed a week's worth of his diary entries to be published on Slate; the Friday installment includes links to the other 4 days of that week. 
            Several video clips of a more recent interview of Judge Posner are available on Big Think.
      Project Posner is a searchable database of hundreds of Judge Posner's opinions, from 1981 to 2006. 
      In 2007 both the University of Chicago Law Review and the Harvard Law Review published special issues celebrating Posner's 25th anniversary on the bench, with many of the authors focusing on a single Posner opinion each.

      In 2010 the University of Chicago  Law Review published a special issue celebrating Judge Frank Easterbook's 25 years on the 7th Circuit.

     Ronald Coase interview (Reason, January 1997)
     Short article about Coase (2004)
            the Ronald Coase Institute
            the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute, work in the Coasian vein, at the U. of Missouri
     Autobiographical essay by Coase (1991)

     1993 Nobel Prize to Douglass North & Robert Vogel 
          Center for New Institutional Social Sciences @ Wash U St Louis
     2009 Nobel Prize to Oliver Williamson  

C.  PUBLIC CHOICE

        In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues,
        and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. . . .  Political
        language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to
        give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
                                                                                        -- George Orwell (1946)

        The U.S. government is a sort of permanent frat pledge to every special interest in the
        nation -- willing to undertake any task no matter how absurd or useless. . . .  Politics
        would not exist if it weren't for special interests.  If the effect of government were always
        the same on everyone and if no one stood to lose or gain anything from government
        except what his fellows did, there would be little need for debate and no need for
        coalitions, parties or intrigue. . . .  The whole idea of our government is this: If enough
        people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
                                                                                        -- P.J. O'Rourke (1991)

     U. of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Working Papers includes numerous papers of interest in PDF.
     Public choice resource page from Constitution.org
     "Yes, Minister" was a very popular British TV show that satirized politics, often along lines consistent with public choice theory.  For a good fansite, check out The Yes (Prime) Minister Files.
     Charles Adams' C-SPAN interview re his For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (1993)
     Ilya Somin, When Ignorance Isn't Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy (Cato, 2004)
     
     Open Secrets  (campaign contributions database)
     Farm Subsidy Database, from the Environmental Working Group
     Vote View, info on Congressional voting patterns 
     Randall Holcombe's homepage (Florida State U.)
     Kenneth Arrow interview (1995)
     Bruno Frey's homepage  
     Center for Study of Public Choice (George Mason U.)
     Public Choice Society
     Center for Study of Constitutional Political Economy (West Virginia U.)   

     Gordon Tullock interview (2003)
         on privilege seeking (1997)
          festshrift (2005)

D.  AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS

    The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under
    government, is the preservation of their property.
                                                                                       -- John Locke (1690)

    The Dane never showed up but they had the "seminar" anyway, under some shade trees
    in a place called the French Park.  Jay Bomarr opened it with his famous speech, "Come
    Dream Along with Me."  I had heard it myself, at Ole Miss of all places, back in the days
    when Jay was drawing big crowds.  It was a dream of blood and smashed faces, with a
    lot of talk about "the people," whose historic duty it was to become a nameless herd and
    submit their lives to the absolute control of a small pack of wily and vicious intellectuals.
                                                                                        -- Charles Portis, "The Dog of the
                                                                                            South" (1979)

     Richard Epstein interview (Reason, April 1995)

     Richard Pipes, "Life, Liberty, Property" (1999)
     Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: reviewed 

     Survey: Capitalism and Democracy, from The Economist, June 26, 2003, the magazine's 160th birthday

     Liberty at Risk: The Least Every Citizen Should Know About Capitalism and its Enemies, by Dean Worcester, late professor of economics at the U. of Washington
     Liberty Story (edited by author Jim Powell)  

    Coercion v. consent: How to think about liberty (a Reason magazine (March '04) debate featuring Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, David Friedman, and James Pinkerton)
    Gertrude Himmelfarb's C-SPAN interview re her book, The De-Moralization of Society (1995)

    Julian Simon & Stephen Moore, The Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years (1999).
    Caplow, Hicks & Wattenberg, The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000 (2001).  The website for the companion PBS program is here.
    Also in this vein, see the very readable feature stories in the annual reports of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

     John Stossel (ABC News) program, "Is America #1?: The Success & Failure of Societies" (transcript, 9-19-99)
     15 lectures on democracy at Yale University, 2001 (text and audio)
     Dave Barry interview (1994)

     Pope John Paul II's encyclicals on "The Hundredth Year" (capitalism vs. socialism) and
         "Faith and Reason" (epistemology, modernism, etc.)
      Margaret Thatcher Foundation, "offers free access to the full texts of thousands of documents relating to the politics of the last quarter of a century"
      Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (NARA and U. of Texas)
      Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation 

     John Fonte, Why There Is a Culture War (2000; it's Tocqueville vs. Gramsci)
     Robert Nozick, Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? (1998)
     Center for Media and Public Affairs (Robert Lichter's group)

F.  THE AMERICAN FOUNDING / AMERICAN HISTORY    

        And you may ask yourself -- Well . . . How did I get here?
                                                     -- David Byrne (Talking Heads, 1980), "Once in a Lifetime" (video)

        The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans and the English, which have a
        long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending
        the great institutions that they have created.
                                                    -- Walter Bagehot (1832)

     Federalist Society bibliography (scroll down to section V)

     Legal History Blog  
    American Society for Legal History "H-LAW"
    Jurist subject guide to legal history    

     The Founders' Constitution (a terrific resource from the U. of Chicago Press)         

     The Heritage Guide to the Constitution 

     The U.S. Constitution: A Reader (Hillsdale College) 

     Constitutional Convention and Ratification of the Constitution (from Teaching American History at Ashland U.)
     Center for the Constitution (James Madison's Montpelier)
     Bruce Frohnen, ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources

     Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, U. of Oklahoma           Center for the Study of the American Constitution, U. of Wisconsin-Madison   

     The Papers of George Washington
     Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive
     George Mason online

     C-SPAN interviews of
            Bernard Bailyn re his To Begin the World Anew (2003)
            Michael Novak re his On Two Wings (2002)
            Gordon Wood re his  The American Revolution (2002)
            Thomas West re his Vindicating the Founders (1997)
            Kent Newmyer re his John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (2002) 

     The Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics, by West & Schambra (2007) 

     Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
          The Common Law (1881) -- and here
          The Path of the Law (1897)    

     A Constitutional History of the United States, by Andrew C. McLaughlin (1936, before the deluge)

     The New Deal Network, from the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute  
     Great Myths of the Great Depression, by Lawrence Reed 
     The Declaration of Independence in American, by H.L. Mencken (1918)
     Constitution for the New Deal, by H.L. Mencken (1937)
     The Revolution Was, by Garet Garrett (1938)

    The Heritage Foundation's 2012 Index of Government Dependency
    The Welfare State We're In blog

     American Memory (Library of Congress)
     A Timeline of American Thought
     American Political History On-line (Richard Jensen, UIC)
     American Experience (PBS)
     Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (includes search engine for the Gilder Lehrman Collection)
     American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and beyond
     De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (searchable)
         Alexis de Tocqueville  page
         Harvey Mansfield's C-SPAN interview re his translation of Tocqueville (2000)
     American Heritage magazine
     HarpWeek:  Harper's Weekly in the 19th century
     Making of America (U. of Michigan site containing thousands of 19th century journals and books)
     Department of American Studies, UVA (very cool American culture site)
     Teaching American History  (from the Ashbrook Center @ Ashbrook U.)
     History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web (George Mason U.)
     Paul Johnson C-SPAN interview re his History of the American People (1998)
     Outline of U.S. History, by Alonzo Hamby for the U.S. Department of State
      State Digital Resources, including online encyclopedias (Library of Congress)

    Gordon Lloyd's excellent web pages on the American Founding, the French Revolution, political economy, and the New Deal (links at the bottom of the page)

 
G.  AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM  (CURRENT)

    American Law Institute  where Restatements come from
    National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws  where uniform acts come from

H.  WESTERN CIV / ENGLISH LEGAL HISTORY 

   To be ignorant of what happened before you were born . . . is to live the life of a child forever.
                                                                                                                                 -- Cicero

    Scholars' Guide to the WWW, by Richard Jensen, offers many history links among other subjects
    Hanover Historical Texts Project
    Best of History Web Sites
    Directory of History Journals

    Eyewitness to History 

    The St. Thomas More Web Site
    Sir Edward Coke
    Lord Mansfield
    William Blackstone
        his "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765-69)
        another version of the Commentaries
    Jeremy Bentham
  

I.  LEGAL PHILOSOPHY / GENERAL PHILOSOPHY  

    Federalist Society bibliography (scroll down to section XVII)

    Links page for my undergraduate course in Jurisprudence 

    Classical Political Theory Web and Modern Political Theory websites (Western Illinois U.)

    Legal Theory Lexicon -- described by its author, Professor Lawrence Solum of the Georgetown law school, as "basic concepts in legal theory for first year law students" -- highly recommended.      
        His Legal Theory  blog focuses on legal philosophy.
    Jurisprudence: An Overview (from Cornell's Legal Information Institute)
    Excerpts from Randy Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law
    Oxford U. legal philosophy sites here and here
    U. of Texas law and philosophy program

     Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
     Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 
     Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (search engine for on-line philosophy encyclopedias)

     WWW Virtual Library: Philosophy     
     Hippias philosophy search engine 

     Philosophy Bro (like hanging out at the Pike house)

    List of 172 of the most common logical fallacies, from the IEM
    Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies, informal logic
    The Fallacy Files, mostly informal logic
    Constructing a Logical Argument, informal logic
    Logic Primer, formal logic from Texas A&M
    Introduction to Logic (Oxford U.)

    Free online course from Carnegie Mellon U: Logic & Proofs

    The Critical Thinking Community
    Critical Thinking on the Web   

J.   "GREAT BOOKS" AND OTHER LITERARY / GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS   

    Arts & Letters Daily

    Internet Public Library
    Librarians Index to the Internet
    RefDesk.com
    Answers.com "online dictionary, encyclopedia, and much more"
    How Stuff Works

    Library of Congress's Annotated List of Reference Websites   

    LibriVox ("provides free audiobooks from the public domain")

    American Writers (C-SPAN)
    BookTV (C-SPAN2)
    Booknotes (C-SPAN)
    Wired for Books (Ohio U.'s literary audio site)
    Between the Covers (National Review Online audio)

     LitQuotes ("quotations from the great works of literature")
     Quoteland 

    Great map/satellite photo sites:
       Google Maps
       Yahoo Maps Beta
       National Geographic maps
       Bing maps

We need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.
                    -- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
                    -- George Orwell (1946)

For more quotes, click here.