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To Pursue And Obtain Happiness And Safety, Timothy Sandefur

Timothy Sandefur

The virtues of free markets are routinely described in economic terminology, and the so-called "laissez-faire" era in constitutional law is said to be a time during which the economic theory of free markets dominated the law. Yet in reality, both the intellectual defense of free markets in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (and its progenitors) as well as the legal theories that prevailed during the "Lochner era," were based not on economics but on moral and political philosophy. Specifically, these ideas were descendants from the classical liberal theory of rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence: specifically, that each person …