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This provocative book outlines a powerful and original theory of liberty structured by the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law. Drawing on insights from philosophy, political theory, economics, and law, he shows how this new conception of liberty can confront, and solve, the central societal problems of knowledge, interest, and power.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction: Liberty vs. License
- Part I: The Problems of Knowledge
- 2: Using Resources: The First-Order Problem of Knowledge
- 3: Two Methods of Social Ordering
- 4: The Liberal Conception of Justice
- 5: Communicating Justice: The Second-Order Problem of Knowledge
- 6: Specifying Conventions: The Third-Order Problem of Knowledge
- Part II: The Problems of Interest
- 7: The Partiality Problem
- 8: The Incentive Problem
- 9: The Compliance Problem
- Part III: The Problems of Power
- 10: The Problem of Enforcement Error
- 11: Fighting Crime Without Punishment
- 12: The Problem of Enforcement Abuse
- 13: Constitutional Constraints on Power
- 14: Imagining a Polycentric Constitutional Order: A Short Fable
- Part IV: Responses to Objections
- 15: Beyond Justice and the Rule of Law?
- 16: Afterword
About the author
Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he directs the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and teaches constitutional law and contracts. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies. His publications include more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as ten books. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States' Attorney's Office in Chicago. In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011-12 he represented the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
Summary
This provocative book outlines a powerful and original theory of liberty structured by the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law. Drawing on insights from philosophy, political theory, economics, and law, he shows how this new conception of liberty can confront, and solve, the central societal problems of knowledge, interest, and power.
