Liberty Law Talk

This edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Vincent Cannato, author of American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, about America's constitutional and policy history regarding immigration.

This edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Vincent Cannato, author of American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, about America's constitutional and policy history regarding immigration.

This Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Samuel Gregg about his most recent book, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Recent events in Cyprus, to say nothing of the economic stasis that envelopes much of Europe, highlight America's need to think deeply about the current trajectory of our fiscal and entitlements policies, among other weighty matters. Gregg's book, however, is not merely a rehashing of dire spending problems and bankrupting entitlements and the predictably poorer future this promises, but is a discussion of the social and cultural commitments that are required to…Read More

This Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Samuel Gregg about his most recent book, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Recent events in Cyprus, to say nothing of the economic stasis that envelopes much of Europe, highlight America's need to think deeply about the current trajectory of our fiscal and entitlements policies, among other weighty matters. Gregg's book, however, is not merely a rehashing of dire spending problems and bankrupting entitlements and the predictably poorer future this promises, but is a discussion of the social and cultural commitments that are required to…Read More

This Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Samuel Gregg about his most recent book, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Recent events in Cyprus, to say nothing of the economic stasis that envelopes much of Europe, highlight America's need to think deeply about the current trajectory of our fiscal and entitlements policies, among other weighty matters. Gregg's book, however, is not merely a rehashing of dire spending problems and bankrupting entitlements and the predictably poorer future this promises, but is a discussion of the social and cultural commitments that are required to…Read More

Amity Shlaes comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss her new biography, Coolidge, that explores and analyzes the triumph of Calvin Coolidge. Much like the title of Shlaes' previous bestseller, The Forgotten Man, Coolidge recovers for the reader a president that our country seems to have forgotten. For many, Coolidge had to be left behind. The successes of his fiscal and regulatory policies and the judgments these policies make on America's New Deal and postwar open-ended spending and regulating tendencies are hard to reconcile. There is also the sober rectitude that Coolidge insisted should guide our lives in a modern…Read More

Amity Shlaes comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss her new biography, Coolidge, that explores and analyzes the triumph of Calvin Coolidge. Much like the title of Shlaes' previous bestseller, The Forgotten Man, Coolidge recovers for the reader a president that our country seems to have forgotten. For many, Coolidge had to be left behind. The successes of his fiscal and regulatory policies and the judgments these policies make on America's New Deal and postwar open-ended spending and regulating tendencies are hard to reconcile. There is also the sober rectitude that Coolidge insisted should guide our lives in a modern…Read More

Amity Shlaes comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss her new biography, Coolidge, that explores and analyzes the triumph of Calvin Coolidge. Much like the title of Shlaes' previous bestseller, The Forgotten Man, Coolidge recovers for the reader a president that our country seems to have forgotten. For many, Coolidge had to be left behind. The successes of his fiscal and regulatory policies and the judgments these policies make on America's New Deal and postwar open-ended spending and regulating tendencies are hard to reconcile. There is also the sober rectitude that Coolidge insisted should guide our lives in a modern…Read More

The Supreme Court will soon pronounce upon the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which amended that state's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act that was enacted into law in 1996 under then President Bill Clinton. This conversation with Ryan Anderson, co-author with Sherif Girgis and Robert George of the recently published What is Marriage?, engages the philosophical argument that there is a natural form to marriage which has been instantiated by the western legal tradition in various ways. This lively conversation debates the most basic questions on this subject in a serious and respectful…Read More

The Supreme Court will soon pronounce upon the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which amended that state's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act that was enacted into law in 1996 under then President Bill Clinton. This conversation with Ryan Anderson, co-author with Sherif Girgis and Robert George of the recently published What is Marriage?, engages the philosophical argument that there is a natural form to marriage which has been instantiated by the western legal tradition in various ways. This lively conversation debates the most basic questions on this subject in a serious and respectful…Read More

The Supreme Court will soon pronounce upon the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which amended that state's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act that was enacted into law in 1996 under then President Bill Clinton. This conversation with Ryan Anderson, co-author with Sherif Girgis and Robert George of the recently published What is Marriage?, engages the philosophical argument that there is a natural form to marriage which has been instantiated by the western legal tradition in various ways. This lively conversation debates the most basic questions on this subject in a serious and respectful…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Randy Simmons on his recently revised and updated book, Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure. Serious policy analysis frequently begins with the unspoken assumption that government must fill the gaps in the marketplace. Markets are vastly imperfect and require for their proper functioning the precise, i.e., perfecting, commands of the regulatory state. Not content with this narrative's iron-clad belief that government rules and regulations live and move in rational operation, having their being serving the commonweal 24/7, Simmons provides a comprehensive way to think about the giant suck of political…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Randy Simmons on his recently revised and updated book, Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure. Serious policy analysis frequently begins with the unspoken assumption that government must fill the gaps in the marketplace. Markets are vastly imperfect and require for their proper functioning the precise, i.e., perfecting, commands of the regulatory state. Not content with this narrative's iron-clad belief that government rules and regulations live and move in rational operation, having their being serving the commonweal 24/7, Simmons provides a comprehensive way to think about the giant suck of political…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Randy Simmons on his recently revised and updated book, Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure. Serious policy analysis frequently begins with the unspoken assumption that government must fill the gaps in the marketplace. Markets are vastly imperfect and require for their proper functioning the precise, i.e., perfecting, commands of the regulatory state. Not content with this narrative's iron-clad belief that government rules and regulations live and move in rational operation, having their being serving the commonweal 24/7, Simmons provides a comprehensive way to think about the giant suck of political…Read More

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with John Vile about his new book, The Writing and Ratification of the U.S. Constitution: Practical Virtue in Action. Our discussion, chronologically and philosophically, retraces the dramatic story of the Founders' Constitution. In four parts, we talk about the failing of the Articles of Confederation, the need to reground republican government on constraints and diffusions of power given the governing weaknesses of many state governments, arguments and contests among major and lesser known figures at the Philadelphia Convention, and the often overlooked state ratifying conventions where the Constitution had to…Read More