Liberty Law Talk

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

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

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, attorney and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), about his new book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. For those who have followed the pathetic censorship episodes on campus the past few decades, you might think that many of these battles had been won. Lukianoff, however, has the proof that free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association remain under siege on campus in myriad forms. Unpopular opinions, usually attributed to those held by conservative students and religious students, are frequently targeted…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, attorney and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), about his new book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. For those who have followed the pathetic censorship episodes on campus the past few decades, you might think that many of these battles had been won. Lukianoff, however, has the proof that free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association remain under siege on campus in myriad forms. Unpopular opinions, usually attributed to those held by conservative students and religious students, are frequently targeted…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, attorney and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), about his new book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. For those who have followed the pathetic censorship episodes on campus the past few decades, you might think that many of these battles had been won. Lukianoff, however, has the proof that free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association remain under siege on campus in myriad forms. Unpopular opinions, usually attributed to those held by conservative students and religious students, are frequently targeted…Read More

Nicholas Eberstadt comes to Liberty Law Talk this month to discuss his significant new book, A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic. Our conversation focuses on the staggering data of our transfer payment state and how it is inevitably strangling the federal government's operations (by 2010 entitlement spending counted for almost 2/3 of federal spending). We also discuss how we arrived at dependency, the consequences for limited government if it isn't rectified, and some possible ways of redress. Eberstadt's book is a sobering account of our fiscal situation and should be read carefully by all. Related items: David Armor reviews A…Read More

The next Liberty Law Talk is with Brian Tamanaha on his important book, Failing Law Schools. This discussion focuses on Tamanaha's claim that legal education is the victim of regulatory capture by the ABA Legal Education Committee. This has led to the imposition of a one-size model for legal education, resulting in a product that is good for professors and their salaries and for administrators, but laden with problems (debt and unemployment) for many students. Additional items at Law and Liberty: Andy Morriss reviews Failing Law Schools in the essay, "Two Cheers for Failing Law Schools"

The next edition of Liberty Law Talk is with professor and author John Fabian Witt on the subject of his new book Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History. Recently named by the New York Times to its 100 Notable Books' List for 2012, Witt's account of the laws of war in American history illustrates the tensions and conflicts that have followed from America's intention since the Declaration of Independence to fight under the existing laws of war, appealing to them for protection, while also using them to advance American interests. Witt's account moves through the War for…Read More

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Adam White, a lawyer in Washington with Boyden Gray & Associates, about the increasing policy significance of independent agencies. White discusses how these agencies have assumed increasing power for implementing policy items that are politically unpalatable but are favored by key segments of a president's political coalition. Analyzed by White in this podcast are the NLRB-Boeing episode, the derailing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear  repository project, and the avalanche of independent agency power delegated by the Dodd-Frank Act.  

The next episode of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Michael Federici about his new book, The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton. Federici attempts to get beyond the mountains of secondary material on Hamilton and the regnant opinions that he was a monarchist, an elitist, or a proto-nationalist thinker. Federici's goal, and the point of this podcast, is to understand this American founder as he understood himself and his purposes within the American constitutional realm. Our conversation focuses on Hamilton's overall political philosophy, but also tries to understand his Christian anthropology,  his constitutionalism, political economy, and foreign policy.

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Dr. Gary Gregg, author of Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College, on the foundations of the Electoral College, its connection with the Founders' concept of deliberative democracy and the formation of reasonable majorities, and the federalism and separation of powers purposes it serves in our presidential system. Additional Law and Liberty Resources: Derek Muller reviews Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Mitchel Sollenberger and Mark Rozell on the use of ‘czars’ by American Presidents. Sollenberger and Rozell are authors of The President’s Czars: Undermining Congress and the Constitution. The conversation places this twentieth century presidential phenomenon in constitutional, political, and historical context. We focus on exactly what constitutes and defines a public official being labeled a czar. Of course, most importantly is the constitutional legerdemain engaged in by presidents who create and appoint czars, outside of the senate confirmation process, to exercise power in a manner that is accountable to…Read More

The next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Charles Kesler on his new book, I am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism.  Professor Kesler's book argues that the intellectual world of modern liberalism is built on philosophical contradictions about the nature of liberty and the requirements of law and government to protect it. A more basic flaw is its continuing inability to limit itself when it comes to state power and welfare entitlements. This "never enough" mentality translates into the overwhelming and barely governable size of the modern democratic state. Our current President, Barack…Read More

This new edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Daniel J. Mahoney of Assumption College regarding Alexis de Tocqueville's counsel in Democracy in America on how Americans can best combat an unbound egalitarianism and the prospect of soft-despotism. Tocqueville's writings have been significantly featured over the past few years given his warnings and sense of the dangers of overly centralized government, so this conversation with a noted Tocqueville scholar will add greater depth to our understanding of what the author of the best book ever written about democracy can teach us regarding the challenges and opportunities that America…Read More

19th November 1620, The Pilgrim Fathers arriving on the Mayflower and landing in New England. Painting by Charles Lucy.The next Liberty Law Talk podcast is a conversation with historian Richard Gamble of Hillsdale College on his challenging new book, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. Gamble provides a definitive intellectual history of this metaphor, now etched, albeit in symbolic new form, in America's national self-definition by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Gamble observes that before the imperatives of the Cold War and the need for powerfully stated arguments for American political purpose, the metaphor "City on a Hill" existed in the Gospel of Matthew's Sermon on…Read More