Rationality, Pirates, and the Law: A Retrospective is a new paper by
Peter T. Leeson, George Mason University - Department of Economics. It appears in the
American University Law Review (2010). Only this abstract is posted:
In the late 1720s Caribbean piracy was brought to a screeching halt. An enhanced British naval presence was partly responsible for this. But most important in bringing pirates to their end was a series of early 18th-century legal changes that made it possible to effectively prosecute them. This short paper's purpose is to recount those legal changes and document their effectiveness. Its other purpose is to analyze pirates' response to the legal changes designed to exterminate them, which succeeded, at least partly, in frustrating the government's goal. By providing a retrospective look at anti-piracy law and pirates' reactions to that law, my hope is to supply some useful material for thinking about how to use the law to address the contemporary piracy problem.
Image: "famed 18th Century Woman Pirate Ann Bonny."
