Law

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Tom Meyer, Common Citizen
Tom Meyer, Common Citizen
3512
 

No one disputes that police officers have an important and difficult job . Moreover no one — at least no one sane — disputes that police work will sometimes be ugly and distasteful, or that officers will occasionally make well-intended mistakes, sometimes with terrible consequences. When such things happen, it’s wise and just to give […]

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Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
9945
 

The Left started the culture war, won it, and now roams the countryside shooting the wounded. Getting same-sex marriage legalized now appears to have been just a beginning for progressives, not the goal that many libertarians and conservatives had assumed. With SSM accepted in more states every year and the Supreme Court considering if it […]

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Troy Senik
Troy Senik
107
 

This week on The Libertarian podcast, Professor Epstein takes on the controversy over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Is it a vital protection for religious liberty? Is it an overbroad statute that needlessly opens the door to discrimination? Exactly how far should government be able to go in forcing individuals to interact with others against their will? […]

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Tom Garrett
Tom Garrett
4024
 

The debate over Indiana’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has already taken some curious twists and turns. The initial response from opponents was to go to the playbook that has been so wildly successful over the past five years: label the law as “hate,” condemn its proponents, and invent wild scenarios that conjure Nazi-esque horrors. Except […]

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Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein
24
 

Last week, the Supreme Court, in the case of Alabama Black Caucus v. Alabama, overturned a redistricting plan for Alabama’s State Legislature, with the Court’s majority (the four liberals and Justice Kennedy) arguing that the new district lines didn’t do enough to preserve the influence of black voters. As I write in my new column for Defining Ideas, it’s […]

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True_wesT
True_wesT
16418
 

Conservatives are allergic to government coercion. This allergy informs all of our positions on public policy. It informs out position on religious freedom. The reason liberals can’t tell the difference between the promotion of liberty and promotion of “hate” all comes down to our differing views of coercion. For conservatives, political coercion is the original […]

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Tom Meyer, Common Citizen
Tom Meyer, Common Citizen
2611
 

Restraint — like any virtue — has its place when applied toward the right objects, at the right times, and in the right amounts (h/t: Aristotle). As conservatives with a constrained view of humanity (h/t: Thomas Sowell), this means that we tend to favor restraint over rashness. But in the case of judicial philosophy, our rhetoric […]

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Troy Senik
Troy Senik
02
 

The left, increasingly unwilling to tolerate any social arrangements not tailored to the exact specifications of the state, has recently set its sights on dramatically narrowing businesses’ abilities to classify workers as independent contractors. In this week’s episode of The Libertarian Podcast, Professor Epstein looks at how a pair of California lawsuits against car services Uber and Lyft […]

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Joe Escalante
Joe Escalante
5423
 

Since I do Los Angeles radio show on entertainment law, I’ve been asked by a few news outlets to voice my opinion on the copyright infringement case pitting the Marvin Gaye Estate against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke. But who cares about my opinion when we have Richard Epstein and John Yoo? I was thrilled […]

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Richard Fulmer
Richard Fulmer
44
 

Today’s Houston Chronicle memorializes a local judge with a story entitled, “U.S. Judge Remembered as Champion of Downtrodden.”  A judge has no damn business being anyone’s champion – at least while he’s on the job.  Any person – rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, privileged or “downtrodden” – facing trial in America has […]

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Troy Senik
Troy Senik
13
 

I’d recommend this week’s installment of The Libertarian podcast if only because it’s rare to hear Professor Epstein hold forth with this level of passion. Our topic: the recent Department of Justice reports on Ferguson, Missouri — one exonerating Darren Wilson in Michael Brown’s death, the other alleging a systemic pattern of racial bias in the Ferguson […]

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Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein
1614
 

Though it has scarcely garnered the attention it deserves, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a report exonerating Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown last year in Ferguson, Missouri. As I note in my new column for Defining Ideas, the Justice Department should, in the interest of civic harmony, be doing everything it […]

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John Yoo
John Yoo
76
 

Ricochet members love to debate the meaning of the Constitution. Many of us are what might loosely be called originalist — we should interpret the Constitution based on the words of the text as they were understood by those who ratified the document. I’ve posted a piece that tries to explain why originalism might be […]

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Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein
68
 

Peter Robinson’s post yesterday cites Robert George’s passionate attack on claims for the constitutionality of gay marriage, wherein George argues that this weighty issue should be decided analytically at the wholesale level. He looks at what he, and many others, think to be bad decisions by an activist Supreme Court and urges that Republicans, both in and […]

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John Yoo
John Yoo
17317
 

Peter posed a question earlier today: If the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, how should we respond? I defer to Richard Epstein’s views on the comparison between Dred Scott, Lochner, and gay marriage. I think that Robert P. George rightly warns of the dangers of the use of the due process clause by judges to […]

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John Yoo
John Yoo
3817
 

In regard to Tommy De Seno’s comments on my previous post about Tom Cotton’s letter, we should all recognize that there is a difference between the policy of any agreement with Iran and the constitutional law that governs the agreement. We can have different views about the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions without […]

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Troy Senik
Troy Senik
14
 

We’ve been having a lively discussion here on the site about the propriety of the open letter to Iran sent by Tom Cotton and 46 other Republican senators. In the newest installment of The Libertarian podcast from the Hoover Institution, I ask Professor Epstein to weigh in: was the Cotton letter a breach of protocol…or law? Is […]

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Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson
9223
 

Constitutional scholar Robert P. George, writing in First Things: Dred Scott v. Sandford was the infamous case in which the Supreme Court of the United States, usurping the constitutional authority of the people acting through their elected representatives in Congress, purported to deny the power of the United States to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. It […]

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John Yoo
John Yoo
8427
 

Time for a primer on international agreements, thanks to the controversy over Senator Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran. Joined by almost all of the Senate’s Republicans, Cotton’s missive warned Tehran that any nuclear deal with President Obama would not last unless it went to Congress for approval: …We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that […]

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