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In Praise Of Woodenness, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Not long ago, I was a stalwart champion of judicial terrorism on behalf of economic liberty. In recent years, however, I have become a meek, mildmannered originalist whose favorite adjective is "wooden."' I still like economic liberty as much as the next person - in fact, more than at least one of the next two persons. Nonetheless, much as I would like to, I cannot agree that the Constitution requires a free market to the extent urged by, among others, Roger Pilon, Bernard Siegan,3 Steven Macedo, 4 Randy Barnett,5 and Richard Epstein.6 My aim here is not to criticize their …

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Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …

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