Cato Unbound is having an on-line symposium on "Is Limited Government Possible?" with contributions by Anthony de Jasay, Gerald Gaus, Michael C. Munger, and me. My contribution is the latest. Here is how they summarize it:

Randy Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law Center, notes that limited government is possible because it is actual, but acknowledges that "given that some limits on power clearly remain, these constraints failed to hold the line the Framers were attempting to draw." Barnett argues that the mechanisms of limited power embodied in the Constitution — reciprocity, checks and balances, and the power of exit — would be more successfully realized in a "polycentric constitutional order in which one would subscribe to a legal system of one's choice as today one subscribes to cell phone service, health and auto insurance, or private security providers." Understanding why this would be an improvement "can help us appreciate why restoring the characteristics of the original Constitution as amended by the Fourteenth Amendment … would be far preferable to the constitutional status quo," Barnett writes.

You can read the whole thing here.