Professor Walter Block's new book, Legal­ize Black­mail, collects a lifetime of his schol­arly arti­cles about black­mail in which he exam­ines the legal and eco­nomic under­pin­nings of black­mail, traces its his­tor­i­cal roots, and presents a lib­er­tar­ian frame­work for think­ing about black­mail and its place in the law. Along the way, he con­fronts the the­o­ries of black­mail put for­ward by many other dis­tin­guished schol­ars, includ­ing Richard Pos­ner, Robert Noz­ick, and Richard Epstein.