This is the first book to examine individual rights from an economic perspective, collecting together leading articles in this emerging area of interest and showing the vibrant and expanding scholarship that relates them. Areas covered include

• The implications of constitutional protections of individual rights and freedoms, including freedom of speech and of the press,
• The right to bear arms,
• The right against unreasonable searches,
• The right against self-incrimination,
• The right to trial by jury,
• The right against cruel and unusual punishment, including capital punishment.

The focus of these papers is both theoretical and empirical, examining how economics can illuminate the entire sequence of crime and punishment, from the decision to commit a crime, to police methods for apprehending and arresting criminals, to the rules used in trials to the scope of punishment for the convicted.

This book brings together for the first time the emerging literature that employs economics to analyze the implications of constitutional protections of individual rights and freedoms, including freedom of speech and of the press, the right to bear arms, the right against unreasonable search, the right against self-incrimination, the right to trial by jury, and the right against cruel or unusual punishment.

Several of the papers included in the book employ economic theory to analyze the efficiency of policies related to the constitutional protections, and others formulate empirical models to estimate the effects of these policies on observable outcomes. Many of the results are immediately relevant to current debate and policy-making. Contributors include Sendhil Mullainathan, Albert Breton and Daniel Seidmann.