Author Archive | Randy Barnett

Today at noon I will be speaking about “Constitutional Cliches: Does Trite Make Right?” at the Vanderbilt School of Law in Nashville. On Saturday morning, I will be speaking at a conference on unenumerated rights at Drake Law School in Des Moines. In formation about what looks like a very interesting conference is here. Law […]

The Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University has just extended the deadline for its famed Liberty & Society summer seminars. IHS is also offering a $10 credit at Laissez Faire Books if you apply now. I started teaching in these seminars when they were founded in 1980. At the time, I was still […]

Last week I was widely quoted in the press referring to the Heller case involving the constitutionality of the DC Gun ban as: one of the only cases in our lifetime when the Supreme Court is going to interpret an important provision of our Constitution unencumbered by precedent. As soon as the quote appeared, I […]

Thanks to Jonathan for noting my Wall Street Journal column yesterday. I was up at 4am and in line at 5am to be number 19 in the Supreme Court bar line. It ended up being sort of fun. The people around me were interesting and when the sun finally rose, I saw lots of people […]

Tomorrow at noon, I will be giving my talk on “Constitutional Cliches: Does Trite Make Right?,” a luncheon sponsored by the Las Vegas Lawyer’s Chapter of the Federalist Society. Further details are here. The event will be held at 11:45am-1:30pm at: Lawry’s the Prime Rib 4043 Howard Hughes Parkway Las Vegas, Nevada 89169 (702) 893-2223 […]

Michael Dorf has posted a reply Can’t We All Just Get Along? to my earlier defense of the compatibility of a correct version of originalism and a correct version of living constitutionalism. Because he eschews “academic esoterica” it is difficult to fully understand his position. As near as I can tell, his entire argument appears […]

Michael Dorf has a new Findlaw column up on Who Killed the “Living Constitution”? in which he argues that ” that the living Constitution is a problematic metaphor, but only because originalists like Justice Scalia either misunderstand or mischaracterize what it stands for.” According to Dorf: If the “living Constitution” metaphor is understood in the […]

Last May, after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the D.C. handgun ban violates the Second Amendment, Harvard Law School Professor Larry Tribe was contacted, and asked if he would like to write an amicus brief in support of Heller. Tribe wrote back to Heller’s attorneys that […]

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 […]

This year, George Mason Law School inaugurated a new, required first-year course, The Founders’ Constitution, which serves as a prerequisite to the required course in Constitutional Law. A new website for the course explains: Law school curricular development requires making guesses about the future of legal practice, but that should not mean constantly chasing the […]

I have updated the times of my talk on “Constitutional Cliches: Does Trite Make Right?”. My talk today at the University of Cincinnati is at 4:30pm. On Thursday of this week, I am speaking at Loyola of New Orleans at 12:30pm and at Tulane at 4:00pm. Future speaking dates are: Saturday, February 23: Students For […]

Via Overlawyered, you can find a harsh critique of the classic jury deliberation movie here, and a vigorous defense here. I saw the movie many years ago, but I remember that my reaction was that Henry Fonda raised many questions that should have been asked by the defense lawyer (e.g., maybe an eyewitness wasn’t wearing […]

Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper whose English Internet edition is widely read in the U.S., has an editorial today that states: “While Obama was taking advantage of Martin Luther King Day to speak out against anti-Semitism among blacks, Jewish spokesmen were using racist language against him, solely because his father was Muslim.” I looked in vain […]

If you’ve ever had even a passing interest in the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, you will find this article, describing the wedding in Israel of a descendant of that community to an American immigrant, of interest.

This website claims to be able to retrofit its door as a modification of existing car models as well as a design for production cars. The website looks hinky and this blog and comments are skeptical. Perhaps readers know more about this product. As a concept, however, it is very cool.