Author Archive | Randy Barnett

Yesterday, the government filed its brief in Ashcroft v. Raich, the medical cannabis case I have been litigating, which is now before the Supreme Court. It contained no surprises but it continues to be disappointing to witness a Republican administration so completely uninterested in federalism (just as it was disappointing when the Clinton Justice Department […]

Liberty and Power have added two more libertarian intellectuals to its All-Star line up. This time it is the duo of Walter Grinder and John Hagel III. Walter and I go back to the Center for Libertarian Studies in New York City in the 1970s, of which he was the Executive Director, and he went […]

Earlier, I linked to and quoted Mark (“Fair and Balanced”) Kleiman’s challenge to Libertarians to reconcile their concern for individual rights with warfare. Mark’s question (found here and here) presupposes that there is a unique Libertarian “doctrine” on these sorts of issues, when the very point of MY initial blog challenge was to provoke a […]

Always thoughtful and provocative, Ilana Mercer takes up the challenge of how Libertarianism does have foreign policy implications in her column, Return to Reason, on WorldNetDaily. (In the process she both ridicules antiwar Libertarians and the war in Iraq at the same time.) Along the way, I learn that she had previously made the argument […]

In his essay, Understanding Political Libertarianism, on Tech Central Station, Will Wilkinson offers his reply to Edward Feser’s The Trouble with Libertarianism. Will’s approach is quite similar to that which I defend in my new paper, The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism (which he generously cites). As I was trying to capture and defend how […]

As usual I have received some thoughtful comments on my post, Libertarianism and Foreign Policy–not all of which I have had the time to acknowledge personally given that I am still squeezing blogging in between lectures and other activities here in Gummersbach. Thomas at Liberty Corner blogged about this both before and after I did […]

In my post Libertartarians on War, I raise the question of what Libertarianism as a political philosophy tells us, if anything, about foreign policy apart from the side constraint that individual rights should be respected when pursuing any foreign policy. I noted that my intent was not to debate the war in Iraq but to […]

The Valley Morning Star in Harlington Texas ran this editorial on July 17th, in which they employed the Presumption of Liberty. (They appear not to have an archive so I cannot provide a direct link) EDITORIAL Gay marriage: The debate disappoints Advocates on all sides assure us that the failure of the Senate, by a […]

I am on my way to the airport for my trip to the IES “Europe and Liberty” summer seminar in Gummersbach. I am sorry I did not get a chance to reply to some of the interesting responses to my previous post on Libertarians on War, including a thoughtful message by David Beito. Perhaps I […]

This announcement was forwarded to me by Professor Itaru Shimazu of the Faculty of Law and Economics at Chiba University: Workshop on Libertarianism at the International Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy The International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (a.k.a. IVR) will hold its 22nd IVR World Congress in Granada, […]

I was pleased to see that my suggestion a while back that there should be a debate on the relationship between Libertarianism and foreign policy was taken up by some bloggers. Most recently by Brian Doss at the always thoughtful Catallarchy (The Problem with Libertarians Today). Some like David Beito considered this an invitation to […]

That is the title of a new paper I have uploaded to SSRN. It will appear later this year as a chapter of a book edited by Peter Berkowitz of George Mason Law School entitled, Varieties of Conservatism in America. The book will be published by Hoover Press. As Larry Solum says on Legal Theory […]

Saw Chris Isaak and the Silvertones tonight in Boston at the Fleet Pavilion. It was a great concert, though the sound system for the vocals was pretty harsh. Anyhow, here is what I wrote about last summer’s concert at Foxwoods: When is Real Faux? Which was actually a follow up to this previous post that […]

One of my pet peeves is the trope, “In these troubled times….” A few weeks ago, I was at a conference also attended by a much younger and quite pessimistic professor of English. I tried to buck him up by telling him that things were not going to hell in a hand basket. Indeed, politically […]

Steve Bainbridge takes issue with Richard Epstein’s op-ed piece, Live and Let Live, in today’s Wall Street Journal (available only to paid subscribers). Generally–and here the illiberal FMA is a jarring exception–conservatives insist that most important structural questions in the U.S. should be decided through the democratic political processes. The libertarian wing regards democratic government […]