F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Two of the most important ideas in the philosophy of law are the “Coase Theorem” and the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” In this paper, the authors explore the relation between these two influential models through a creative thought-experiment. Specifically, the paper presents a pure Coasean version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, one in which property rights are well-defined and transactions costs are zero (i.e. the prisoners are allowed to openly communicate and bargain with each other), in order to test the truth value of the Coase Theorem. In addition, the paper explores what effect (a) uncertainty, (b) exponential discounting, (c) and elasticity have on the behavior of the prisoners in the Coasean version of the dilemma. Lastly, the paper considers the role of the prosecutor (and third-parties generally) in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and closes with some parting thoughts about the complexity of the dilemma. The authors then conclude by identifying the conditions under which the Prisoner’s Dilemma refutes the Coase Theorem.

What lessons can legal scholars learn from the life and work of W. D. "Bill" Hamilton, a lifelong student of nature? From my small corner of the legal Academia, three aspects of Bill Hamilton’s work in evolutionary biology stand out in particular: (i) Hamilton’s simple and beautiful model of social behavior in terms of costs and benefits; (ii) his fruitful collaboration with the political theorist Robert Axelrod and their unexpected yet elegant solution of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, an important game or puzzle that had defied solution until Hamilton and Axelrod came along; and (iii) Hamilton’s conception of science generally -- and in particular his view of the process of scientific justification -- as a form of trial advocacy. In this review of Ullica Segerstråle’s recently-published biography of Bill Hamilton, the author briefly recounts and reviews each one of these important contributions.