Richard A. Epstein is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Over the past three decades, Richard A. Epstein has repeatedly
argued--with analytical rigor and astonishing erudition--that
governments govern best when they limit their actions to protecting
liberty and property...Mr. Epstein believes that constitutional law
lost its way when it began to embrace a Progressive vision,
according to which rights are created by a supposedly benevolent
state...[He] vividly shows us how constitutional law would look if
we gave priority to individual rights--something that we have not
done for almost a century.
-- Wall Street Journal
Epstein has now produced a full-scale and full-throated defense of
his unusual vision of the Constitution. This book is his magnum
opus...Much of his book consists of comprehensive and exceptionally
detailed accounts of how constitutional provisions ought to be
understood...All of Epstein's particular discussions are
instructive, and most of them are provocative...Epstein has written
a passionate, learned, and committed book.
-- New Republic
[An] important and learned book.
-- Times Literary Supplement
The central mission of The Classical Liberal Constitution is to go
against the grain of modern Supreme Court jurisprudence and much of
the legal scholarship that has grown up around that body of work.
The motivation for this argument should be apparent from the major
disarray that infects every area of modern American life: steady
decline in the average standard of living; constant battles over
debt limits and fiscal cliffs; uncertainty over key elements of the
tax structure; massive overregulation of the most productive
sources in society (health care and financial services);
government-inspired brinksmanship in labor negotiations; and
runaway redistribution programs that undercut the economic
production that makes these programs viable. All of these major
programs could not have happened under the original constitutional
structure, faithfully interpreted in light of changed
circumstances. The confluence of these events cannot be dismissed
as the result of random noise or simple mistakes. Rather, they are
the ultimate consequence of the profound progressive break with the
classical liberal tradition that was the guiding genius in the
drafting and interpretation of the Constitution.
-- From the book
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