The Collected Works of Henry G. Manne

As the founder of the Center for Law and Economics at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the George Mason School of Law, Henry G. Manne is one of the founding scholars of law and economics as a discipline. This three-volume collection includes articles, reviews, and books from more than four decades, featuring Wall Street in Transition, which redefined the commonly held view of the corporate firm.

Volume 1, The Economics of Corporations and Corporate Law, includes Manne’s seminal writings on corporate law and his landmark blend of economics and law that is today accepted as a standard discipline, showing how Manne developed a comprehensive theory of the modern corporation that has provided a framework for legal, economic, and financial analysis of the corporate firm.

Volume 2, Insider Trading, uses Manne’s ground-breaking Insider Trading and the Stock Market as a framework for many of Manne’s innovative contributions to the field, as well as a fresh context for understanding the complex world of corporate law and securities regulation.

Volume 3, Liberty and Freedom in the Economic Ordering of Society, includes selections exploring Manne’s thoughts on corporate social responsibility, on the regulation of capital markets and securities offerings, especially as examined in Wall Street in Transition, on the role of the modern university, and on the relationship among law, regulation, and the free market.

Manne’s most auspicious work in corporate law began with the two pieces from the Columbia Law Review that appear in volume 1, says general editor Fred S. McChesney. Editor Henry Butler adds: ?Henry Manne was an innovator challenging the very foundations of the current learning.” ?The ?Higher Criticism’ of the Modern Corporation” was Manne’s first attempt at refuting the all too common notion that corporations were merely devices that allowed managers to plunder shareholders. Manne saw that such a view of corporations was inconsistent with the basic economic assumption that individuals either understand or soon will understand the costs and benefits of their own situations and that they respond according to rational self-interest.

Fred S. McChesney is James B. Haddad Professor of Law at the Northwestern School of Law, focusing on business and antitrust law and their intersection with economic theory. He has been an associate director for policy and evaluation at the Federal Trade Commission.

Henry N. Butler, editor of volume 1, is Executive Director of the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law.

Stephen M. Bainbridge, editor of volume 2, is William D. Warren Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law.

Jonathan R. Macey, editor of volume 3, is Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Securities Law, and Corporate Finance and is deputy dean at Yale Law School.