ABSTRACT
In this chapter I am concerned with the rational design of a legal system. This problem has been analyzed on a number of analytical levels: social choice theory asks how an assignment of rights can be achieved that is consistent with axioms such as liberty and Pareto-optimality (Sen 1970).1 Whereas Sen provided an impossibility result, it has since been shown that under a more extensive definition of rights his result can be substantially weakened (van Hees 1999). But more obvious problems remain: sufficiently extensive assignments of rights lack co-possibility and, therefore, it is not obvious how one would choose between different assignment of rights, given that each assignment is Pareto-optimal.
