Richard Epstein on Roman Law and Sociobiology

In this episode I talk with UChicago and NYU law professor Richard Epstein. Professor Epstein is a prolific legal scholar who is most famous as a classical liberal/libertarian theorist of the common law. However, as much as Epstein’s ideas are influenced by enlightenment thought and law and economics, his true love in law, as he’ll tell anyone, is Roman Law. In this episode we talk a bit about how why Roman law worked, how it eventually fell apart, and a bit about Epstein’s interest in sociobiology as a way to explain the foundations and limits of legal norms.