• About
  • Contact
  • Staff

Law & Liberty

A Project of Liberty Fund

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Liberty Law Forum
  • Podcasts
  • Book Reviews

March 30, 2012|Administrative State, Constitutionalism, Private Property, Progressivism, Rule of Law

Talking with Richard Epstein about the Rule of Law and Private Property

by Richard M. Reinsch II|Leave a Comment

You will want to listen to the current Liberty Law Talk conversation with Professor Richard Epstein on his new book Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law. Professor Epstein ranges widely in the interview and considers the rules needed to uphold free markets, prosperity, and liberty. One apt observation from Professor Epstein in the discussion is his comparison of America under its current regulatory order to a suicidal patient debating the means of its death. In short, we must re-institute the rule of law, property rights, and a proper manner of public lawmaking if we are to recover our former strength.

The conversation notes that the rule of law requires substantive commitments to generality in application and that it must ensure predictive efficacy if private property and commerce are to flourish. Unfortunately, much of the American Constitution’s attempt to provide these commitments have been lost in the abuses worked by the administrative state and the judiciary’s refusal to scrutinize legislation and rule-making that slights the takings and contract clauses of the Constitution. Professor Epstein also analyzes and discusses the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill as egregious extensions of these practices.

Richard M. Reinsch II

Richard M. Reinsch II is the editor of Law and Liberty and the host of LibertyLawTalk. He is also the editor of Seeking the Truth: An Orestes Brownson Anthology (CUA Press, 2016). You can follow him @Reinsch84.

About the Author

Design for Liberty: A Conversation with Richard Epstein
The Triumph of Constitutional Argument

Recent Popular Posts

  • Popular
  • Today Week Month All
  • Schlesinger, Warts and All January 30, 2018
  • The President's Non-enforcement Power May 7, 2014
  • The Beat Generation and The Decline of the West January 30, 2018
  • Trump Should Be Assessed Politically, Not Psychologically January 29, 2018
  • Enabling Congress to Control the Administrative State January 30, 2018
Ajax spinner

Related Posts

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Book Reviews

Socrates on Courage, Self-Sacrifice, and the Divine

by Ariel Helfer

Robert Bartlett brings to life Plato’s juxtaposition of Socrates and Protagoras, who may have been Socrates’ most impressive opponent.

Read More

J.Q. Adams, Diarist

by Diana Schaub

He saw “the hideous reality of the slave ascendency in the Government of this Union” and set about resisting it.

Read More

Podcasts

Debating the Thorniest Issues: A Conversation with Peter Schuck

A discussion with Peter H. Schuck

Debating Poverty, Immigration, Racial Preferences, Campaign Finance, and Religious Freedom with Peter Schuck, author of One Nation Undecided.

Read More

Walker Percy in the Ruins: A Conversation with Brian Smith

A discussion with Brian A. Smith

Why we need Walker Percy’s diagnosis of what ails the contemporary soul.

Read More

Luther's Rebellion: A Conversation with Brad Gregory

A discussion with Brad S. Gregory

Martin Luther launched a religious revolution that shaped the modern world in ways that he never intended.

Read More

The Great Libertarian versus Conservative Debate: A Conversation with Nathan Schlueter and Nikolai Wenzel

A discussion with Nathan W. Schlueter

What principles really divide libertarians and conservatives?

Read More

Recent Posts

  • The Trump Administration’s Accomplishments—In Spite of the Deep State

    Mike Lofgren argues that the Deep State controls everything, but he attributes too much to malice, and not enough to ignorance and self-interest.
    by Alexandra Hudson

  • President Washington: A Prudent Guardian of State Secrets

    In 1796, in the midst of the donnybrook over the Jay Treaty, President Washington asserted what we now call “executive privilege .”
    by Richard Samuelson

  • The Breaking Point

    It would have been a welcome surprise for Trump to break with Woodrow Wilson’s precedent of making the SOTU a spoken address to the Congress.
    by Richard M. Reinsch II

  • Competition Can Improve on Apparent Market Failure

    Imperfect markets don't mean that regulation is the answer; competition often does a better job than bureaucracy at improving outcomes.
    by John O. McGinnis

  • Enabling Congress to Control the Administrative State

    Moderating the power of the administrative state means giving power back to Congress and eliminating judicial deference.
    by Mike Rappaport

Blogroll

  • Acton PowerBlog
  • Cafe Hayek
  • Cato@Liberty
  • Claremont
  • Congress Shall Make No Law
  • EconLog
  • Fed Soc Blog
  • First Things
  • Hoover
  • ISI First Principles Journal
  • Legal Theory Blog
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Pacific Legal Liberty Blog
  • Point of Law
  • Power Line
  • Professor Bainbridge
  • Ricochet
  • Right Reason
  • Spengler
  • The American
  • The Beacon Blog
  • The Foundry
  • The Originalism Blog
  • The Public Discourse
  • University Bookman
  • Via Meadia
  • Volokh

Archives

  • All Posts & Publications
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Forum
  • Liberty Law Blog
  • Liberty Law Talk

About

Law and Liberty’s focus is on the content, status, and development of law in the context of republican and limited government and the ways that liberty and law and law and liberty mutually reinforce the other. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law and Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • Archive

Apple App Store
Google Play Store

© 2018 Liberty Fund, Inc.

Subscribe
Get Law and Liberty's latest content delivered to you daily
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
No thanks