Introduction: Law and Its Unintended Consequences

The Great Depression of the 1930s led the United States into the New Deal: a brave new approach to policy making that emphasized Keynesian borrowing, economic intervention, and welfare state planning. In the wake of this political revolution, modern policy makers have built massive public institutions; purchased utilities and transit systems; imposed every manner of occupational licensing; built vast military, prison, and educational complexes; and driven away the free market in an expanding array of areas. In "The Need for Theory in Assessing Peer Courts," Andrew J. Dick, Dan J. Pence, Randall M. Jones, and H. Reed Geersten suggest that sociological theory as well as theoretical orientations from other disciplines may avoid some of the unintended consequences of the increasingly popular peer court system. [...]Christine K. Oakley analyzes the consequences of legislation in the state of Washington that is simply irreconcilable on its face with its stated purposes: a set of so-called public health care enactments that cannot be implemented with the overarching health care policies and the inadequate funding of Washington State's health care statutes.