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Frank Lloyd Wright: the rebel architect

I spoke at LevelUp (formerly TOS-Con) this summer about the life and career of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the video of my presentation has just been posted online. Unfortunately, due to some kind of technical error, the video consists almost entirely of my PowerPoint slides, so you'll probably find it easier to listen to, rather than watch, the presentation:

The Supreme Court decision that could help us take back our cities

I have an article on the Fox News site this morning about the Grants Pass lawsuit that the Supreme Court is being asked to take up—a case with important ramifications for the homelessness crisis in American cities, and especially in Phoenix. Excerpt:

To be fair, both of those rulings said cities can still enforce laws against camping on the streets. "Even where shelter is unavailable," the Martindecision declared, "an ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations might well be constitutionally permissible."

Nevertheless, bureaucrats nationwide have found the "involuntariness" rationale so confusing that some can’t figure out how to address their local homelessness problems—and others have seen the rulings as a handy way to evade responsibility. As Judge Blaney put it, "city officials that wish to do nothing while such encampments grow and fester" have viewed the Martin and Grants Passcases as "convenient excuse[s]."

Read the rest…

Talking with A&G about the homelessness cases

I joined Armstrong & Getty this morning to talk about the homelessness lawsuits in Phoenix--where a state trial court judge has ordered the city to clean up the "Zone" encampment--and in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been asked to take up the Grants Pass case. If you missed it, you can listen here:

The Goldwater Chair in American Institutions at ASU

I’m honored to announce that I have been named the Barry Goldwater Chair in American Institutions at Arizona State University for 2023-24. This position (which has no relationship to the Goldwater Institute) was established on May 16, 1977, and according to its founding charter, is “a visiting professorship for scholars in political science, economics, history and related fields” with the goal of “honor[ing] Barry Goldwater for his distinguished service as a United States Senator and help students better understand the principles of Americanism, individual freedom, and the free enterprise system for which he has stood throughout his career.” I am profoundly moved to hold a position that has been held in the past by such luminaries as John Dean and Jack Goldsmith.

In my role as Goldwater Chair, I will be working with the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty to teach a class in the spring semester entitled “The American Dream: Economic Liberty as an American Institution,” which will explore the political, legal, and cultural ramifications of the right to economic freedom. The class will be hosted by ASU’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

In addition to the class, the Goldwater Chair traditionally delivers a number of public lectures, and I will be presenting three of these. The first will be on October 17 at 5 p.m. at Memorial Hall on the Tempe campus, on the subject of my book Freedom’s Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness. The second will be on November 28, on the subject of how licensing laws and other restrictions on economic liberty harm democratic values. The third will be announced as soon as it’s arranged.

The Foundations of Freedom

One of the projects I've been working on at the Goldwater Institute is a series of videos on the Foundations of Freedom. These short educational videos explore the principles of liberty, from private property to freedom of speech to the question of individual pride. The Institute will be releasing them in stages over the coming weeks--and here is the first one: The Power of Property. Hope you enjoy--and please share!

Emanations, Penumbras, and Zeugmas, and Distributions

In my remarks about Haaland v. Brackeen at Cato Monday, I feel I gave short shrift to the question Prof. Christopher Green asked regarding Justice Gorsuch’s view that the Indian Commerce Clause gives Congress greater powers than does the Interstate or Foreign Commerce Clause, and I want to address it more fully.

I discussed the alleged “plenary power,” which the majority stitched together from the penumbras and emanations of the Treaty, Commerce, and other powers, and which Gorsuch rightly rejects. But I also rejected Gorsuch’s view that the Commerce Clause itself can encompass child welfare matters with respect to Indians when it obviously doesn’t encompass that with respect to states. I said that there are not three Commerce Clauses; there is just one: “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Yet Gorsuch, relying in part on Prof. Green’s article in the Pennsylvania State Law Review, wrote in his concurrence that these three powers are substantively different.

Why Haaland v. Brackeen is not the end of the story

I spoke at Cato yesterday about the ICWA decision. You can watch my remarks here, and read my commentary on the case in the new issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review.

Osiris

My poem “Osiris” is in the new issue of Pulsebeat, just published.

“Because it is there”

The new issue of Reason Papers features a symposium on the ideas of Philippa Foot and Ayn Rand. I was honored to be invited to contribute, and my article examines how aspiration and inspiration work in the philosophies of these two fascinating thinkers. Simply put: is “because it is there” sufficient reason for climbing a mountain? Read on…

Talking with Matt Rousu about the right to earn a living

I talked the other day with Professor Matt Rousu of Susquehanna University about the right to earn a living--why it's such an important part of human freedom and how why it's so frequently under assault. The interview is cut up into a few segments, which you can watch part one here:

and part two here:

Upcoming speaking events

Here's the latest list of my upcoming speaking events. Remember, if you're interested in having me come speak at your campus or to your community group, drop me a line!

Sept. 18 - 10:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. Eastern time - The Indian Child Welfare Act: why Brackeen is not the end of the story - Cato Institute Supreme Court conference - Washington, D.C.

Sept. 27 - 5:00 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Lincoln Club - Orange County, CA [cancelled]

Oct. 17 - TBD - Freedom's Furies - ASU - Tempe, AZ

Oct. 27 - 4:45 p.m. - The role of equity in the definition of property rights - Brigham Kanner Property Rights Conference - Williamsburg, VA

Nov. 28 - 5:00 p.m. - Insiders, Outsiders, and the American Dream: Economic Freedom and Democratic Participation" - Memorial Union - ASU - Tempe, AZ

A chance to rein in the Administrative State’s tyranny?

I have an article in the Orange County Register today about the upcoming Chevron deference case that all the constitutional law nerds are excited about. Excerpt:

The classic 1970s cartoon “Schoolhouse Rock” taught a generation of American kids how a bill becomes a law: Congress debates proposed legislation and votes on it—and if the House and Senate approve, it’s sent to the White House. Then, if the president signs the bill, it goes into the statute books.

But the sad truth is that this simple process barely resembles how lawmaking actually works. In today’s world, most of the rules we must obey are created by unelected employees of the regulatory agencies often called the “Administrative State.” These unelected bureaucrats’ powers far exceed anything contemplated by the Constitution, and they’re subject to few of the checks and balances that the Founders thought essential to a healthy democracy.

The result is a system in which lawmaking occurs almost automatically, without meaningful input by voters or their representatives. No Californian, for example, thinks bees are a type of fish. Yet in 2019, regulators at the state’s Department of Fish and Game passed a rule classifying bees as fish. State law only lets those regulators pass rules for protecting fish, but the law also uses the word “invertebrates,” and since bees are invertebrates, department officials declared that they could therefore write rules about bees, too.

No voter ever thought the perfectly dry land that Mike and Chantelle Sackett bought in Idaho twenty years ago should be legally defined as “a water of the United States,” or that their effort to build a home should qualify as “water pollution.” But a single bureaucrat at the Environmental Protection Agency decided otherwise—leading to a decades-long legal battle that bankrupted the Sacketts even though they won.

No elected member of Congress ever decided to put a one-year limit on veterans applying for disability benefits. But in 2009, when National Guardsman Thomas Buffington applied for payments he was entitled to, he learned Veterans Administration officials had implemented a rule barring payments beyond “one year prior to the date” of an application.

In these and countless other cases, regulatory agencies have exploited vague or undefined words in laws, in order to give themselves power—power that derives not from “we, the people,” but from their own say-so. What’s worse, courts typically let them do it.

Read the rest...

Talking about the race preferences case with David Bernstein

I had a chance yesterday to talk about the Supreme Court's decision in the Harvard/UNC race preferences case with Professor David Bernstein, author of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America (which I reviewed here). You can watch our conversation here:

Upcoming speaking events

Here's the latest list of my upcoming speaking events. Remember, if you're interested in having me come speak at your campus or to your community group, drop me a line!

July 11 - 1 p.m. Arizona time - Race Preferences: Past, Present, and Future webinar discussion with David E. Bernstein - online

Sept. 18 - 10:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. Eastern time - The Indian Child Welfare Act: why Brackeen is not the end of the story - Cato Institute Supreme Court conference - Washington, D.C.

Sept. 27 - 5:00 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Lincoln Club - Orange County, CA

Oct. 27 - 4:45 p.m. - The role of equity in the definition of property rights - Brigham Kanner Property Rights Conference - Williamsburg, VA

Even Criminals Get Due Process. Why Don’t These Innocent Americans?

This fall the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case about civil asset forfeiture--actually, about one aspect of forfeiture, namely, whether you're entitled to a hearing on the question of whether the government can keep your stuff during the time it takes for a judge to decide whether they're allowed to take it. Suppose cops take your car. You're entitled to a trial on whether or not they had the right to do that. But a trial could take months or even years. What happens to the car in the meantime? That's the question the Court will decide--and the Goldwater Institute filed a brief yesterday urging the Court to give people a hearing on that question. We also took the opportunity to discuss the injustice of forfeiture more broadly, and to explore how America's founding fathers knew that forfeiture would undermine government's legitimacy and actually encourage lawbreaking. 

I have an article in Townhall.com today about the case. Here's an excerpt:

Perhaps worse than all of this is the way forfeiture undermines the legitimacy of law enforcement itself. When citizens see officers as profit-seeking predators rather than disinterested protectors, it generates resentment that can grow into what sociologists call “legal cynicism.” People become reluctant to call the police when in need, relying on vigilantes, instead—and they begin to sympathize with lawbreakers, sometimes helping them conceal their crimes. There’s nothing new about this: in 1790, James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution, warned that forfeiture is so unjust that people view it with “sentiments of pain and disgust”—sentiments which eventually lead them to engage in “a deadly feud with the state.”

The pendente lite principle adds still more injury: it lets officials keep property before that confiscation has even been deemed legal—which can take a long time. That means that even if the owner ends up winning her case and getting her property back, the delay may have rendered it worthless. In one case, prosecutors tried to seize an entire company pendente lite, promising that they’d return it if the court later decided the taking was invalid. The court rejected that notion, pointing out that “the business itself would at that point be drained of any good will by the summary closing, because the old customers would by then have resorted to new places.”

Read the rest...

What Brackeen decided and what remains to be decided

I had the honor yesterday of speaking at the Arizona Judicial Conference about the Brackeen decision and the issues that remain to be resolved in Indian Child Welfare Act litigation. You can listen here. (It's about 15 minutes.)

Supreme Court decision means crimes against Native American children continue

I have an article in today's Washington Times about the Supreme Court's decision in Brackeen to turn away the constitutional challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act. Excerpt:

The ruling marks just the latest injustice inflicted on Native Americans by the federal government--done, as usual, in the name of "helping" them.... [T]he rules this law imposes are actually less protective than the laws that apply to other children. The Indian Child Welfare Act overrides the ancient "best interests of the child" rule and imposes a provision called "active efforts," which forces state child welfare officers to return abused Indian children to the families that have abused them--a rule that doesn't apply to White, Black, Asian, or Hispanic children. The result, in case after case, has been the preventable beating, molestation, and murder of Native American children whom state officials knew to be at risk.

Read the rest...

Celebrate liberty for all on Juneteenth — and reject race-based separatism

I have an article in today’s Washington Examiner about Juneteenth and those who wish to separate us on the basis of race:

This country was dedicated at its birth to the proposition that “all” people are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” True, those words were written by flawed men, some of whom owned slaves themselves. But the founders were not trying to fix all injustices overnight; they were proclaiming what Abraham Lincoln would call a “maxim for free society,” which would be “constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated” by future generations. That maxim is the source of our national identity, and that “constant labor” is cause for rejoicing.

How sad, then, that we are beset today by alleged champions of justice who seek not to reinforce but to undermine that maxim, not to realize the spirit of Juneteenth but to undermine it and instill the notion that people should be treated differently based on race. Those who vanquished slavery believed in realizing the American dream for everyone. But today’s race-politics leaders pursue the opposite goal: fracturing us into camps defined by ancestry.

Read the rest…

What happened to the polymaths?

In my latest article for Discourse magazine, I take a look at the past, present, and future, of the "Renaissance Man." Here's an excerpt:

As Richard Dawkins once put it, “You could give Aristotle a tutorial”—not because each of us is individually more brilliant than the great Greek philosopher, but because our intellectual world has built cumulatively to a greater height than he could access. And although superstition and fraud are still regrettably commonplace, our atmosphere of knowledge has been purged of much of the nonsense that polluted even the great minds of Aristotle’s day. Thus there’s a sense in which each of us is a Renaissance man or woman without even realizing it. Within a few minutes, any person with access to the internet can learn more about a bird, or Rachmaninoff—or about how to fix a broken dryer or carburetor—than da Vinci or Jefferson was likely to learn in a year. The internet and other technological resources have democratized the uomo universale into the popolo universale.

But that’s true, of course, only if we choose to take advantage of it. There’s a kind of moral hazard in the bounty of our knowledge: It can become an excuse—even a subconscious one—for intellectual laziness. The ready availability of such a rich body of research and art makes it easy to take it for granted, and to devote our energies elsewhere, confident that if a question comes up, we can “just Google it.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, being a Renaissance man or woman is energy-intensive, and the great advantage of intellectual specialization is that it’s more efficient to let doctors worry about treating cancer, engineers focus on building satellites, lawyers attend to the lawsuits—and to consult them only when one needs their expertise. But both specialization and intellectual sloth pose a threat to mental health no less than physical lethargy does to the body.

As the creators of the “liberal arts curriculum” knew, a broad exposure to ideas in a wide range of fields makes one more creative and insightful, particularly because it enables people to recognize patterns or similarities in different fields of study. When Darwin encountered Malthus’ “growth model”—a principle of economics—he realized that it held the seeds for an insight equally applicable to the world of biology. Today’s life sciences, in fact, owe their very origin to this “multidisciplinary” insight. It’s impossible to guess how many equally brilliant connections today’s researchers may be overlooking right now by not attending to what’s being said on the other end of campus.

Read the rest...

Green Bag Supreme Court bobbleheads for sale!

I've listed my Green Bag bobbleheads of John McLean and Byron White for sale on eBay. Well, McLean doesn't bobble...he bubbles!

Get them before it's too late!