I’m delighted to report that Tim Sandefur will be guest-blogging this coming week about his new book, The Conscience of The Constitution, which has just been published by the Cato Institute. Tim is a principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national libertarian public interest legal group that defends economic liberty and private property rights, and is also the author of Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America (2006) and The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom And The Law (2010).
In Conscience, Sandefur argues that the classical liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence should guide interpretations of the Constitution: that the central value the Constitution was meant to foster and protect is individual liberty and not — as many of today’s lawyers, judges, and law professors believe — democracy. As a result, Sandefur defends the controversial theory of “substantive due process” and argues against both conservatives and liberals who believe in “judicial restraint” or “judicial modesty.” This isn’t quite my own view of the matter, but I expect the posts to be very interesting and thought-provoking.