Author Archive | Randy Barnett

When I was a boy, I used to enjoy the series Bat Masterson, starring Gene Barry. I even had a toy Bat Masterson cane. Recently, I started watching some old episodes of Bat Masterson on the Western Channel (Pictures and theme song here). Although far from the quality of Maverick with James Garner and Jack […]

24 premiered on Sunday night. You can post your thoughts on the new season here.

Underlying Principles, my very brief (11 pages) comment on Jack Balkin’s Original Meaning and Abortion, is now up on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In his forthcoming article, Original Meaning and Abortion, Jack Balkin makes the startling disclosure that he is now an originalist. “[C]onstitutional interpretation,” he writes, “requires fidelity to the original meaning of […]

There is a very interesting post by Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization, entitled, Fellow Liberals: Be a “Legal Formalist,” Join the Recovering Realists Club (Small Meetings Likely). Read the whole thing, but here is how it ends: Finally, I must preempt a misimpression that might be created by the tenor of this post, which has articulated […]

I was an early adopter with MP3 players with a 20GB Archos Jukebox followed by an Ipod. I ripped and burned all my CDs and made a favorites list of my all-time favs. Eventually I ruined all my all-time favs by getting tired of them. Then I shuffled my library and eventually got tired of […]

All I care to know about the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is that it destroyed the tradition of post-season bowl games, especially the only one I really cared about: the Rose Bowl in which the winner of the Big Ten is supposed to play the winner of the Pac 10. Unfortunately, the tradition also includes […]

I found this pretty amusing (hat tip The Influence Peddler): We all know those Nigerian E-mail scams — we need your help securing $100 million, all we need is an American bank account and a small fee. Most of us, being normal people, delete them. Robert Hickam, aka Barrister Jubril, is not a normal person. […]

Whenever I blog about the Ninth Amendment, there are always respondents offering contrary interpretations. In response to my Rule of Law column, In RE: Life or Death, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, several commenters disputed the relevance of the original meaning of Ninth Amendment to a federal regulation restricting access to experimental drugs to terminally […]

Yesterday, I had an op-ed entitled In Re: Life or Death in the Wall Street Journal on the issue of judicial deference (available here for 7 days). It addresses the following question: When the fundamental rights of life and health are at stake, should judges defer to Congress or to “the people themselves”? This issue […]

The Northwestern Law Review has a new online debate format called Colloquy. Former-NU Law dean Bob Bennett has a very interesting “Dialogue on Originalism” with University of Illinois law professor Larry Solum of Legal Theory Blog here. This exchange is a highly accessible way to grasp the difference between original framers intent originalism, and original […]

From BeldarBlog: The Supreme Court has refused to stay the Second Circuit’s denial of a claim of reporter’s privilege asserted by the New York Times. Here is the Second Circuit’s description of the case: After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the federal government launched or intensified […]

There are better and worse ways to lose elections. This statement by Mike Pence (via Glenn & the Corner) seems to be among the better. WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Congressman Mike Pence released the following statement today on the GOP’s midterm election loss: Election day 2006 will be remembered as a turning point in American […]

Updating my website, I just noticed that Laissez-Faire Books is giving away free copies of my book, Restoring the Lost Constitution. Well, in truth, they are charging $12.71, but that is almost free, isn’t it?

(Civil comments only please)