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The hallmarks of the particular Public Choice theory whick characterizes the Virginia School are a profound scepticism concerning the role of the government and a systematic preference for market over non-market decision-making.

"One of the more important intellectual developments in the social sciences since the Second World War has been the metamorphosis of the political man into economic man. The assumption that politicians and bureaucrats pursue the public interest has increasingly given way to assumptions of self-interested motivation on the part of these key actors in the political drama. Models built on the self-interest motive nehind political behavious have produces a rich harvest of hypotheses that seem more in tune with the political realities."

Charles K. Rowley

Charles K. Rowley was born in Southampton, England in 1939. He was educated at the University of Nottingham where he obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Economics in 1960 and a Ph. D. in Economics in 1964. He taught at the Universities of Nottingham, Kent, York and Newcastle upon Tyne and held summer fellowships in the Center for Socio-Legal Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford before migrating to the United States in January 1984 to join the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University.

Dr. Rowley has written and edited some 40 books and some 200 scholarly papers in the fields of industrial organization, public choice, welfare economics, international trade and law-and-economics. His work consistently emphasizes the importance of private property rights, limited government and the rule of law as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Among his recent books are The Right to Justice (1992), Property Rights and the Limits of Democracy (edited 1993), Trade Protection in the United States (with Willem Thorbecke and Richard Wagner) (1995), The Political Economy of the Minimal State (edited 1996) and Classical Liberalism and Civil Society (edited1997). He also edited Public Choice

Theory (three volumes 1993), Social Choice Theory (three volumes 1993), The Economics of Budget Deficits (two volumes, with William F. Shughart, II and Robert D. Tollison, 2002), The Encyclopedia of Public Choice (two volumes, with Friedrich Schneider, 2004), and The Origins of Law and Economics: Essays by the Founding Fathers (with Francesco Parisi, 2005). Most recently, he has edited, with introductions, in ten volumes, The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock (2004-6).

Dr. Rowley was a Founding Editor, 1980-1986, of The International Review of Law and Economics and served as Joint Editor of Public Choice between 1990 and 2007. He is Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University, General Director of the Program in Economics, Politics and the Law in the James Buchanan Center for Political Economy, and General Director of The

Locke Institute, an independent non-profit educational foundation located in Fairfax, Virginia and dedicated to the advancement of a classical liberal political economy.