Law And Happiness

Edited by Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein is now available from University of Chicago Press:

Since the earliest days of philosophy, thinkers have debated the meaning of the term happiness and the nature of the good life. But it is only in recent years that the study of happiness—or “hedonics”—has developed into a formal field of inquiry, cutting across a broad range of disciplines and offering insights into a variety of crucial questions of law and public policy.

Law and Happiness brings together the best and most influential thinkers in the field to explore the question of what makes up happiness—and what factors can be demonstrated to increase or decrease it. Martha Nussbaum offers an account of the way that hedonics can productively be applied to psychology, Cass R. Sunstein considers the unexpected relationship between happiness and health problems, Matthew Adler and Eric A. Posner view hedonics through the lens of cost-benefit analysis, David A. Weisbach considers the relationship between happiness and taxation, and Mark A. Cohen examines the role crime—and fear of crime—can play in people’s assessment of their happiness, and much more.

The result is a kaleidoscopic overview of this increasingly prominent field, offering surprising new perspectives and incisive analyses that will have profound implications on public policy.

Table of Contents:

Introduction to the Conference on Law and Happiness

Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein

Measuring Well-Being for Public Policy: Preferences or Experiences?

Paul Dolan and Tessa Peasgood

Happiness Inequality in the United States

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

Who Is the Happy Warrior? Philosophy Poses Questions to Psychology

Martha C. Nussbaum

Two Recommendations on the Pursuit of Happiness

Christopher K. Hsee, Fei Xu, and Ningyu Tang

Hive Psychology, Happiness, and Public Policy

Jonathan Haidt, J. Patrick Seder, and Selin Kesebir

Illusory Losses

Cass R. Sunstein

Pain and Suffering Awards: They Shouldn’t Be (Just) about Pain and Suffering

Peter A. Ubel and George Loewenstein

Death, Happiness, and the Calculation of Compensatory Damages

Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee

Happiness Research and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Matthew Adler and Eric A. Posner

What Does Happiness Research Tell Us About Taxation?

David A. Weisbach

The Effect of Crime on Life Satisfaction

Mark A. Cohen

Index

Recommendation from Solum’s Legal Theory Bookworm here.

Comments

[Tim Zinnecker]

My proposed contribution:
The UCC and Happiness (But I Repeat Myself).

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

An earlier book I would recommend to those interested in this subject is Robert E. Lane's The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

One more item: see too Jon Elster's delightful argument, "Self-realisation in work and politics: the Marxist conception of the good life,"* wherein he defends, among other things, the proposition that self-realisation is superior to consumption on both welfarist and nonwelfarist grounds." For instance, and perhaps not surprising given the well-known notion of diminishing marginal utility, Elster (citing Richard L. Solomon and J. D. Corbit's theory of 'opponent process') illustrates how the

"pleasures of consumption tend to become jaded over time, while the withdrawal symptoms become increasingly more severe. The consumption activity remains attractive not because it provides pleasure, but because it offers release from the withdrawal symptoms. Conversely, the attractions of self-realisation [as the 'full and free actualisation and externalisation of the powers and the abilities of the individual'] increase over time, as the start-up costs diminish and the gratification from achievement becomes more profound. There are economies of scale in self-realisation, whereas consumption has the converse property."

Elster proceeds to address the question of the institutional conditions that might promote or block self-realisation.

*In Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene, eds., Alternatives to Capitalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

[Kim Krawiec]

I was surprised to see that you weren't listed in the TOC, Tim -- the omission of any serious treatment of the UCC's role in happiness certainly seems like grievous omission. Thanks for the sources, Patrick!