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If legal scholar Richard Epstein is right, then the New Deal is wrong, if not unconstitutional. Epstein reaches this sweeping conclusion after making a detailed analysis of the eminent domain, or takings, clause of the Constitution, which states that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. In contrast to the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the eminent domain clause has been interpreted narrowly. It has been invoked to force the government to compensate a citizen when his land is taken to build a post office, but not when its value is diminished by a comprehensive zoning ordinance. Epstein argues that this narrow interpretation is inconsistent wit...
With this book, Richard A. Epstein provides a spirited and systematic defense of classical liberalism against the critiques mounted against it over the past thirty years. One of the most distinguished and provocative legal scholars writing today, Epstein here explains his controversial ideas in what will quickly come to be considered one of his cornerstone works. He begins by laying out his own vision of the key principles of classical liberalism: respect for the autonomy of the individual, a strong system of private property rights, the voluntary exchange of labor and possessions, and prohibitions against force or fraud. Nonetheless, he not only recognizes but insists that state coercion is...
The country's leading libertarian scholar sets forth the essential principles for a legal system that best balances individual liberty versus the common good.
This controversial book presents a powerful argument for the repeal of anti-discrimination laws within the workplace. These laws--frequently justified as a means to protect individuals from race, sex, age, and disability discrimination--have been widely accepted by liberals and conservatives alike since the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and are today deeply ingrained in our legal culture. Richard Epstein demonstrates that these laws set one group against another, impose limits on freedom of choice, undermine standards of merit and achievement, unleash bureaucratic excesses, mandate inefficient employment practices, and cause far more invidious discrimination than they prevent. Epstein...
Early in his rise to enlightenment, man invented a concept that has since been variously viewed as a vice, a crime, a business, a pleasure, a type of magic, a disease, a folly, a weakness, a form of sexual substitution, an expression of the human instinct. He invented gambling. Recent advances in the field, particularly Parrondo's paradox, have triggered a surge of interest in the statistical and mathematical theory behind gambling. This interest was acknowledge in the motion picture, "21," inspired by the true story of the MIT students who mastered the art of card counting to reap millions from the Vegas casinos. Richard Epstein's classic book on gambling and its mathematical analysis cover...
Shamans, Software and Spleens presents a look at the tricky problems posed by the information society. Boyle's book discusses topics ranging from blackmail and insider trading to artificial intelligence, microeconomics and cultural studies.
In Classical Mathematical Logic, Richard L. Epstein relates the systems of mathematical logic to their original motivations to formalize reasoning in mathematics. The book also shows how mathematical logic can be used to formalize particular systems of mathematics. It sets out the formalization not only of arithmetic, but also of group theory, field theory, and linear orderings. These lead to the formalization of the real numbers and Euclidean plane geometry. The scope and limitations of modern logic are made clear in these formalizations. The book provides detailed explanations of all proofs and the insights behind the proofs, as well as detailed and nontrivial examples and problems. The book has more than 550 exercises. It can be used in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses and for self-study and reference. Classical Mathematical Logic presents a unified treatment of material that until now has been available only by consulting many different books and research articles, written with various notation systems and axiomatizations.
How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution explores the fundamental shift in political and economic thought of the Progressive Era and how the Supreme Court was used to transform the Constitution into one that reflected the ideas of their own time, while undermining America’s founding principles. Epstein examines key decisions to demonstrate how Progressives attacked much of the legal precedent and eventually weakened the Court’s thinking concerning limited federal powers and the protection of individual rights. Progressives on the Court undermined basic economic principles of freedom and competition, paving the way for the modern redistributive and regulatory state. This book shows that our modern “constitutional law,” fashioned largely by the New Deal Court in the late 1930s, has its roots in Progressivism, not in our country's founding principles, and how so many of those ideas, however discredited by more recent economic thought, still shape the Court's decisions.
Modern administrative law has been the subject of intense and protracted intellectual debate, from legal theorists to such high-profile judicial confirmations as those conducted for Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. On one side, defenders of limited government argue that the growth of the administrative state threatens traditional ideas of private property, freedom of contract, and limited government. On the other, modern progressives champion a large administrative state that delegates to key agencies in the executive branch, rather than to Congress, broad discretion to implement major social and institutional reforms. In this book, Richard A. Epstein, one of America...
Following a vast expansion in the twentieth century, government is beginning to creak at the joints under its enormous weight. The signs are clear: a bloated civil service, low approval ratings for Congress and the President, increasing federal-state conflict, rampant distrust of politicians and government officials, record state deficits, and major unrest among public employees. In this compact, clearly written book, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein advocates a much smaller federal government, arguing that our over-regulated state allows too much discretion on the part of regulators, which results in arbitrary, unfair decisions, rent-seeking, and other abuses. Epstein bases his class...