Legalize Blackmail

Professor Walter Block’s new book, Legal-ize Black-mail, collects a lifetime of his schol-arly arti-cles about black-mail in which he exam-ines the legal and eco-nomic under-pin-nings of black-mail, traces its his-tor-i-cal roots, and presents a lib-er-tar-ian frame-work for think-ing about black-mail and its place in the law. Along the way, he con-fronts the the-o-ries of black-mail put for-ward by many other dis-tin-guished schol-ars, includ-ing Richard Pos-ner, Robert Noz-ick, and Richard Epstein.