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Critiquing constitutional readings: introduction and underdetermination
There are many challenges when lay people “read” the U.S. Constitution. To illustrate some of these challenges, I think it’s useful and instructive to critique a specific analysis of the Constitution.
July 2012 / 3 min.
The shifting critics of experts and expert agencies
During the 1960s, left-leaning critics in the United States began to attack expert agencies they had once supported.
July 2012 / 3 min.
Nineteenth-century America was not a libertarian utopia
There is a commonly held perception that the United States in the nineteenth century lacked rules and regulations that we today commonly associate with intrusive “big government.”
May 2012 / 4 min.
Objectivity, science, and (a)political action
Theodore M. Porter, in Trust in Numbers, argues that the American distrust of elites – and of government itself – has led to a focus on “mechanical objectivity,” or rules to make decisions. In many ways similar to what American jurists call “procedural due process,” the idea is to diminish the necessity of personal judgement in favor of predictable, […]
April 2012 / 5 min.
Benefits of viewing the right to privacy as a property right
There are many approaches to protecting privacy, but many of them run into conflicts, either with existing protections (perhaps especially the First Amendment) or with those who are suspicious of government regulation. But privacy rights do not necessarily need to be protected in a novel new form as a new right – one could instead leverage existing theories of property to do it.
April 2012 / 7 min.
The problem of expertise in a liberal democracy
Stephen Turner’s book, Liberal Democracy 3.0, provides a useful background to the problem of expertise – especially scientific expertise – in a modern liberal democracy. What is a liberal democracy? First, of course, it’s important to define what a “liberal democracy” is. The term liberal, unfortunately, has acquired a negative connotation for many today, especially amongst conservatives in the […]
April 2012 / 5 min.
Stephen Turner describes “The Social Study of Science before Kuhn”
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions – in many ways established the modern field of science studies. Stephen Turner provides a brief, socioligist’s version of the lead-up to Kuhn’s seminal book. Here’s a quick summary of his key points: Bacon and Comte Turner begins with Francis Bacon’s “The New Atlantis” (1627). Although Bacon’s work was more political […]
April 2012 / 5 min.
Problems with treating privacy as a property right
An alternative approach to creating an entirely new right to privacy would be to extend property rights to cover information or personal data, rather as intellectual property extended physical rules into the realm of the intangible.
April 2012 / 3 min.
Privacy and the First Amendment: privacy as property?
In Copyright and the First Amendment: The Unexplored, Unbroken Historical Practice, Terry Hart does an excellent job of exploring why the First Amendment has never been held to interfere with the enforcement of copyright, including pre-publication injunctive relief.
April 2012 / 2 min.
The rule of law in Michigan
An MSNBC report by liberal journalist Rachel Maddow strongly condemned the current Republican leadership in Michigan for not following the state constitution. Instead, Republicans have passed bills subject to “immediate effect” without the required constitutionally required two-thirds majority vote in both houses of the legislature.
April 2012 / 7 min.