You probably remember the story of King Solomon and the baby. Two women come before the monarch claiming to be a child’s mother. Neither has evidence to show. So Solomon proposes the following: He’ll cut the baby in half. Each woman will receive an equal share. This will be equitable, if a bit messy.
On the face of it, the king was either a baby-hating madman or an idiot. Killing an infant and divvying up its corpse hardly seems like a reasonable response to a maternity dispute. But if you know the story, you know what Solomon had in mind: The baby’s true mother would rather sacrifice her child’s custody than her child’s life. She would turn down the king’s proposal, and then he would award the baby, in its entirety, to her.
We can learn a couple of things from Solomon. First, judicial procedures that seem downright stupid may in fact be very wise. Second, when “ordinary” evidence is lacking, judicial officials may still be able to get to the bottom of things by creating clever rules—even ones that are based on a lie (“when maternity is in doubt, cut the child in half “). Such clever rules can manipulate people’s incentives, leading them to reveal information only they have access to through the choices they make, writes Peter Leeson in the latest print edition of Reason.
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