Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: Why Can’t You Shout “Fire!” in the Virtual Public Square?

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 8, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Almost 10 years ago the free-speech champion Trevor Timm, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the time and now with the Free of the Press Foundation, implored readers "to stop using the ‘fire in a crowded theater’ quote" to justify limits on free expression. Many people apparently need a reminder. Timm wrote, "[Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell] Holmes [Jr.'s]' quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is wildly misunderstood." To dispel the misunderstanding, Timm told the story behind the quotation. The Court opinion containing the quote is from Schenck...

TGIF: Abortion Rights v. Abortion Permissions

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 1, 2022 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Even if you cringe at last week's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, it would be wrong to say that the five Supreme Court justices took away women's right to have abortions. I say this because the Supreme Court, unfortunately, never actually recognized a women's right to terminate a pregnancy. Instead, what the Court did in 1973 in Roe v. Wade (and reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey) was to grant women permission to have abortions up to a judge-defined moment. (Such court permission-granting is not unique to abortion.) A permission is obviously not a right; it is the...

Substantive Due Process

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 28, 2022 | Blog, Justice

[T]he conservatives reject substantive due process, which they see as a contradiction in terms that authorizes judges to legislate. If the term sounds odd, it would be odder still to dismiss the idea. As Roger Pilon writes, “By ‘law’ [in due process of law] the drafters could hardly have meant mere legislation or the guarantee would have been all but empty.” In other words, if a legislature may “duly” pass any substantive law it wishes, life, liberty, and property are hardly secure. Substantive due process is an indispensable restraint on legislative caprice. "Dissolving the Inkblot: Privacy...

Privacy and the Constitution

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 27, 2022 | Blog, Justice, Libertarianism

"[B]oth the [']liberals['] and the conservatives misunderstand privacy. The conservatives engage in a narrow and unnatural reading of the Constitution in order to avoid seeing what they do not wish to see, while the [']liberals['] find in the Constitution not penumbras but a Rorschach test that reveals only what they wish to see. In both cases it comes down to an inkblot. Both approaches allow their adherents to disparage most freedoms and exalt the few freedoms allowed by their respective moral and political philosophies." "Dissolving the Inkblot: Privacy as Property Right," Cato Policy...

TGIF: Parents Should Govern Their Kids’ Education

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 24, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

How clear are these opening words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”? Judging by the U.S. Supreme Court's many ventures into this area, we'd have to say not very clear at all. There's a lesson in that. Constitutions don't interpret themselves. People do, and the line between interpreting and making law is not as bright as we're told. The latest Court decision in the matter, Carson v. Makin, is instructive in that regard. The 6-3 decision -- Republican appointees made up the majority,...

TGIF: Free Exchange Is Win-Win

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 17, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

With the possible exception of the political class and its cronies, most of us would be healthier, wealthier, happier, and freer if the public knew how to engage in "the economic way of thinking." The late Paul Heyne, who wrote a popular textbook by that name (now in its 13th edition thanks to Peter Boettke and David Prychitko), summarized the economic way of thinking by writing, "All social phenomena emerge from the choices of individuals in response to expected benefits and costs to themselves." I think of Heyne's title whenever I encounter an example of failing to understand this....

TGIF: The Libertarian Solution

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 10, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

"What's the libertarian solution to social or economic problem X? How about problem Y or Z?" No libertarian needs to wait long before hearing such questions. But strictly speaking, the libertarian philosophy offers no solutions to specific problems. That's not what it does. It is not itself a solution. Rather, it describes an institutional environment in which imaginative people are free and motivated to discover innovative solutions to individual and collective problems. That environment has moral, cultural, economic, and legal dimensions, all grounded in self-ownership, respect for others,...

TGIF: Heartless Immigration Restrictions Need Replacing

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 3, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Some elements of the right-wing are spreading the fear that Democrats are engineering a take-over of America by replacing white voters with nonwhites through liberal immigration policies. It's come to be known as "the great replacement," and in its ugliest form, it is said to be a Jewish conspiracy. Remember the sickening chant at the 2017 right-wing Charlottesville rally: "Jews will not replace us"? I wish this fear-mongering could be ignored, but since a few fanatics have committed violence apparently to prevent the "great replacement," it needs to be discussed. Why would anyone lose even...