• About
  • Contact
  • Staff
  • Home
  • Essays
  • Forum
  • Podcasts
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Classics

February 5, 2018|artificial reason, Babylonian Talmud, Common Law, Edward Coke, Jewish Law, John Selden, Matthew Hale, Natural Law

Selden, a Legal and Philosophical Giant

by Steven Grosby|

John Milton's Areopagitica described him as "the chief of learned men."

April 3, 2017|

Why Freedom Is a Legal Concept

by Steven Grosby|

John Lilburne reading from Coke's Institutes at his trial for treason (c.1649).

The king will have a copy of the law written for him . . . It will remain with him and he will read it all his life . . . to observe faithfully all the words of the law. –Deuteronomy 17:18-19 You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your fellow countrymen fairly. –Leviticus 19:15 You shall have one law for the non-Israelite who lives permanently with you (in your land) and the native-born in the land (the Israelite). –Leviticus 24:22   More than 50 years ago, Bruno Leoni, in Freedom and…

Read More

Responses

The Rule of (Pluralistic) Laws

by Jacob T. Levy

Steven Grosby’s rich Liberty Forum essay combines, as his writing always does, a sensitivity to history with a careful attention to theoretical problems. I am tempted to engage him on the terrain of history, in the hope of prompting still more from him on the Middle Ages; were I just a listener, that is what…

Read More

The Rule of Law and the Rule of Reason

by Russell Hittinger

Steven Grosby’s essay is an excellent contribution on the formal and procedural elements that must be upheld to maintain the rule of law. Grosby’s essay, however, invites us to unpack what kind of “reason” is inherent in law and to ask what it means for law “to rule.” The 13th century theologian and philosopher Thomas…

Read More

One Need Not Choose Between the Rule of Law and Constitutional Federalism

by Todd Zywicki

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to read Professor Grosby’s Liberty Forum essay and to be invited to comment on it. I am especially happy that Professor Grosby has focused on the rule of law as a legal concept, as opposed to arguing that it's a political or philosophical concept. For unlike much…

Read More

The Rule of Law and Its Many Tensions

by Steven Grosby

Best to begin by acknowledging one’s mistakes. In the original Liberty Forum essay given the title “Why Freedom Is a Legal Concept,” I referred to the often quoted statement, so important for liberty and the rule of law, of Henry de Bracton, that “above the king is the university of the realm”—that is, “there is…

Read More

November 21, 2016|Bonham's Case, Common Law, Due Process Clause, Edward Coke, Hoke v. Henderson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Liberty, Liberty of the Subject Act, Obergefell v. Hodges, William Blackstone

Defining Liberty Properly

by Devin Watkins|

On the Originalism blog, Michael Ramsey and Andrew Hyman responded to my post for Law and Liberty on the original understanding of substantive due process. Hyman disputes the definition of “liberty” I provided and asserts a different definition of “due process of law” in the Fifth Amendment, while Ramsey asks for more evidence that the definition of “liberty” given wasn’t unique to Thomas Jefferson.

Read More

January 25, 2016|Edward Coke, Magna Carta, Martin Krygier

Magna Carta’s Votaries, Skeptics, and Traditionalists

by Marc DeGirolami|

The octocentennial of Magna Carta has presented an auspicious occasion for reflecting on exactly what we ought to be celebrating, if anything, about Magna Carta, an ancient document with a tenuous connection to our own time and place. Is Magna Carta the fountainhead of our most cherished rights and liberties? Or is it a document entirely of its own time—an unremarkable set of compromises between King John and a few of his rapacious barons—with next to nothing to say to us today? In this post, I’ll describe the responses of Professor Martin Krygier, one of the more penetrating writers on the…

Read More

January 18, 2016|Burnham v. Superior Court, Due Process, Edward Coke, Pennoyer v. Neff, The Case of Marshalsea

Tradition and the Judicial Talent

by Marc DeGirolami|

I previously suggested that a traditionalist judicial decision is self-consciously so. It demonstrates a keen interest in the coherence and continuity of particular legal practices and authorities over long periods of time. It is intentional about retransmitting and re-cementing those enduring legal practices and authorities in its own decision. And its traditionalism emerges from a close reading of the opinion and from attending to the court’s understanding of its own role.

In this respect, consider the plurality opinion authored by Justice Scalia in Burnham v. Superior Court.

Read More

September 9, 2015|Administrative State, APA, Edward Coke, Philip Hamburger, Prerogative, Rule of Law, Separation of Powers

Administrative Law in Turmoil: New Coke Causes Indigestion

by Michael S. Greve|

Sir Edward Coke

Harvard Law School’s dynamic AdLaw duo (Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule) has struck again. In The New Coke: On the Plural Aims of Administrative Law  the authors take aim at the insurgent fundamental assault on the legitimacy of the administrative state, under the banner of “the separation of powers.” The challenge is playing a growing role in separate [Supreme Court] opinions, and on occasion, it finds its way into majority opinions as well. Justice Clarence Thomas is the principal advocate, but he has been joined, on prominent occasions, by Justice Antonin Scalia and  sometimes by Justices Samuel Alito and Chief…

Read More

January 16, 2015|

Wherefore Art Thou Cicero?

by Steven Grosby|

In response to: Where Did the Noble Lawyer Go?: Looking for Cicero in the Boardroom or on the Billboard

American actor Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch, stands in a courtroom in a scene from director Robert Mulligan's film, 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' 1962. Actor Gregory Peck died June 12, 2003 at age 87 of natural causes in his Los Angeles, California home. (Photo by Universal Studios/Courtesy of Getty Images)

With “Where did the Noble Lawyer Go?: Looking for Cicero in the Boardroom and on the Billboard,” Professor Stephen Sheppard has provided us with a provocative, as one expects from the editor of the three-volume Selected Works of Sir Edward Coke,[1] rumination on the decline of the legal profession. He contrasts the lawyer of today with Cicero, “the model of the lawyer as hero,” the civic leader who guards the ideals of the law. The contrast is appropriately self-reflective, as Sheppard raises these questions for our consideration: “What does the hunt for Cicero mean? What should we expect a modern…

Read More

More Responses

Teaching the Law’s Moral Purposes

by R.H. Helmholz

I am an admirer of Steve Sheppard and of his scholarship. His book on the ethical obligations of lawyers is not just as a reminder of the necessity for lawyers to comply with lawyerly standards. More than formal compliance with the canons of ethics is needed today.[1] Serious consideration of the true moral purposes of…

Read More

Cicero, Demythologized and Disenchanted, and Still a Voice Worth Heeding

by Charles J. Reid, Jr.

I am fascinated with Stephen Sheppard's essay on Cicero and the modern American lawyer.  In a sense, he is calling me back to those ideals I held so dear as an entering one-L a long time ago. Cicero, it is not too strong to say this, is one of the reasons I went to law school.…

Read More

Rebuilding a Ciceronian Legal Culture

by Stephen M. Sheppard

It is daunting to be read by genuine scholars whom one admires.  The thoughtful comments, elaborations, and criticism of Stephen Grosby, Charles J. Reid, and Dick Helmholtz have surely given the reader much more wisdom and provocation than did my essay. Despite the many truths of my commentators’ criticism, Liberty Law Forum and its editor Richard…

Read More

July 31, 2013|Christian Hebraism, Common Law, Edward Coke, Five Knights Case, John Selden, Matthew Hale, Mishnah, Moses, Talmud, Tower of London

Reading the Talmud in the Tower of London

by Steven Grosby|

On March 4, 1629, John Selden, the most learned man in England, was imprisoned in the Tower of London: what did he read while there?

July 8, 2012|Calvinism, Edward Coke, Francis Bacon, Roger Williams, Wall of Separation

The Puritanical Roger Williams

by Daniel Dreisbach|

Possibly no figure out of the American past today enjoys a greater prestige than Roger Williams – and for none is esteem based on so little familiarity with his deeds or so comprehensive an ignorance of his words.  – Perry Miller [1] Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island and champion of religious liberty, is one of those figures in American history the biographies of whom almost always reveal more about the biographer or the times in which they were written than about the subject.  An enigmatic character, Williams’s biographers have tended to treat him as if he were of a…

Read More

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

Read More

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

Read More

Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

Read More

James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

Read More

Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

Read More

Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

Read More

Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

Read More

America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

Read More

About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • Archive

© 2021 Liberty Fund, Inc.

This site uses local and third-party cookies to analyze traffic. If you want to know more, click here.
By closing this banner or clicking any link in this page, you agree with this practice.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Necessary Always Enabled

Subscribe
Get Law and Liberty's latest content delivered to you daily
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Close