Abstract:
This dissertation is composed of three different essays. Each essay discusses how laws
change over time. The first essay focuses on marriage in the United States. It starts with
the Beckerian model and then develops the relational contract model to analyze the role
religion plays in marriage. The second essay focuses on abortion law and how it had
changed over the centuries in the United States. A model of social entrepreneurship is
developed and incorporated with other theories from Public Choice. From this, one can
understand social movements from the left and the right and how they work differently.
The final essay is on the Indian constitution and how it has evolved in the area of civil
and economic rights. Two Public Choice models (Congleton Model and Tsebelis Model)
are used to analyze the evolution of the Indian constitution. In India, civil rights has been
strengthened but economic rights has been weakened.
