... from Reason . First, Richard Epstein: There is no disagreement from me that empathy is a poor guideline for constitutional decision making. Nor do I believe that our "malleable" Constitution should be the plaything of the justices. But it doesn't follow from these points that it's a cardinal judicial sin to upset federal or state legislation. Nor does some implicit, overarching judicial norm of "strict construction" condemn most forms of judicial intervention. That narrow conception of the judicial role may be congenial to conservatives who think democratic outcomes almost always have greater legitimacy than judicial ones. As a libertarian, however, I do not share that judgment. The Founders well understood the risk of faction, which could allow simple majorities to restrict the liberties or confiscate the property of their political opponents. [...] However unhappy conservatives and libertarians might be with her nomination, they won't put a dent in...

Obviously--and it could not have happened any other way--the ideological lines have been drawn with President Obama's nomination of of Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sottomayor to the Supreme Court. First, let me point out personally that nothing in the nomination surprises me: Sottomayor had long been feted as a potential Obama nominee, and her views are in fact predictably Statist [“The Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right," which means the States and municipalities can restrict any weapons they so choose for any reason.], but in replacing Associate Justice David Souter I'm not opposed to some affirmative action. If we're going to have another Statist with traditional liberal/progressive views on the Court, then having a female Hispanic with traditional liberal/progressive views as opposed to another old white guy is probably not a horrible development.... In other words, having watched the SCOTUS drif...

As a Political Theory/American Government major at Georgetown University I took numerous courses from my mentor, Professor George Carey. Carey is a brilliant mind and one of a few if not the only conservative-leaning professors at the University. Freshman year (fall '89) I somehow lucked into being randomly assigned to his American Government intro course. Carey is no ideologue but a conservative in the intellectual, libertarian, constitutionalist, and federalist senses. I owe him more than any other teacher I have ever known. He is one of the foremost authorities on the Federalist Papers and wrote a companion book called The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. Anyway, in Fall '94 I was in Carey's colloquium Theories of Judicial Interpretation. One day he announced that an upcoming meeting would be in a different room with a surprise special guest. He had said it over several classes but I had forgotten about the special guest when the day arrived. In wa...

Sometimes when you want to comment on a major story of the day, it's difficult to figure out what to say that's any more important than the thousands and thousands of posts floating out there on the Net. I mean, I'm a Libertarian, which practically requires me to have "cold, dead hands" tattooed on my forearm, doesn't it? In truth I do believe that not only does the 2nd Amendment assert the right of individuals to own firearms, but also signifies the inalienable right of American citizens to make the determination (with due appreciation for the consequences) to employ deadly force in self-defense. Yawn. So what? Not like this was news to anyone, right? Let's try a different approach, and assume for a moment that the DC gun ban had been passed by a majority vote of the citizens. How would that change things? Can a community actually vote to restrict or even a constitutional right within its borders? This is actually a more interesting question than it ...