*** Full transcript at
http://reason.com/reasontv/2016/04/14/randy-barnett-our-republican-constitutio ***
In his forthcoming book Our
Republican Constitution: Securing the
Liberty and
Sovereignty of
We the People,
Randy E. Barnett, the intellectual leader of a consciously libertarian legal movement that has hugely reshaped how courts interpret the law, lays out his case for "judicial engagement," in which judges actively challenge and invalidate laws and policies that infringe on individual rights and freedom. Our Republican Constitution is a powerful rebuke to democratic majoritarianism, which holds that legislators have b
A professor at
Georgetown Law School, Barnett has also been at the center of two major
Supreme Court cases in the
21st century. He was the lead in
2005's Raich case, in which the
Court ruled that
Congress' power under the Commerece Clause was immense. And, as he recounts in gripping and compelling fashion in his new book, Barnett helped to create the nearly successful (and in his telling, partly successful) challenge to the individual mandate at the heart of
President Obama's controversial health care reform.
Born in
1952, Barnett grew up in the
Chicago area, attended Northwestern as an undergad (he majored in philosophy), and went to law school at
Harvard, where he was a classmate of Supreme Court nominee
Merrick Garland.
Garland, he says, is a smart, nice guy who would be terrible from a libertarian perspective because of his reflexive deference to lawmakers under virtually any circumstance. "As a matter of judicial philosophy," says Barnett. I think he would not be a good justice for us to have"
. In the early
1970s, he was associated with the
Center for
Libertarian Studes and economist
Murray Rothbard, whom he says continues to shape his thinking in important ways.
An alumnus of the
Institute for Humane Studies and an active participant in the
Federalist Society, Barnett is the author the highly regarded and controversial academic books
The Structure of Liberty (
1998) and
Restoring the Lost Constitution (2004). Intended for a general audience, Our Republican Constitution is simultaneously intellectually rigorous and a real page-turner, filled with dramatic anecdotes that illustrate Barnett's powerful and provocative argument that routine deference to elected legislators is the wrong way to interpret the Constitution or create a rich and flourishing society.
Barnett sat down with
Nick Gillespie at
Reason's
D.C. headquarters for a wide-ranging conversation about his experiences working in his father's laundry, his favorite
Supreme Court case (that would be
Lochner), how he developed his nascent libertarianism at a time when few people called themselves such, why he thinks a new political party may be a necessity, why he thinks
Donald Trump is an authoritarian, and why he believes
Ted Cruz understands how the Constitution limits government power.
About 1 hour.
Camera by
Todd Krainin and
Joshua Swain; edited by Swain.
Full transcript and more at http://reason.com/reasontv/2016/04/14/randy-barnett-our-republican-constitutio
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- published: 07 Apr 2016
- views: 124