Prof. Barnett writes to correct an error I made in my previous Libertarian Bookworm post. I said in passing that Barnett’s recent book Restoring the Lost Constitution “is really a collection of his law review articles.” I didn’t mean to disparage the book, which I think is quite excellent; but I recognized many of the chapters from law review articles he’d written in the past, and I assumed he’d turned them in to chapters of his book. In fact, the opposite is the case—he used the chapters as inspirations for law review articles which he published while writing the book. My apologies to Prof. Barnett.
Also, I said that “Barnett’s argument...leaves too many gaps to make a person very comfortable that his jurisprudence is really warranted by the Constitution.” This overstates what I meant to say. In fact, I think Barnett is totally correct and that his theory is entirely warranted by the Constitution. But I wish that he had provided a more thorough grounding in the legal history which would show that his argument is not nearly so revolutionary as people think, but that it is really a restoration of the Constitution. I think very highly of his book.
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