The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Audio/Video: Conference on "Contested Commodities"

Last month, the Law School's Law and Economics Program hosted a conference  entitled "Contested Commodities: Reframing the Debate on Financial Incentives in the Supply of Genetic Materials." The conference, which was organized by Visiting Professor of Law Michele Goodwin, looked at the law, economics, and ethics of the burgeoning market for human genetic materials ranging from blood, sperm, and ova to harvested organs and even newborn babies. The keynote address (video of which is embedded below) was by Richard Epstein, and audio files of all of the panels are available from the conference webpage.

 

More Epstein on Health Care

Back in March, Professor Epstein published a piece on the blog of the journal Health Affairs entitled "Health Care Disparities: Deregulation First, Redistribution Last." The piece begins so:

There is an immense volume of literature that expresses an abiding concern with the evident and persistent disparities in access to health care. These disparities are typically a function of race, sex, disability, or income. Once disparities have been documented, the usual approach to reform proposes some new form of intervention that is intended to smooth them out, usually by various kinds of forced access or subsidies regime. Just recently, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced, for example, a nonpartisan commission “to identify and recommend practical solutions to eliminate health disparities and improve health for all Americans.” Unfortunately, the chief consequence of these proposals will be, as it has usually been, to make a health system balkier and less responsive than it had been before. The identified disparities doggedly persist in spite of the best efforts to counter them.

Want to read more? Head on over to the Health Affairs blog to read the rest.

Audio/Video: Richard Epstein Debates Whether Health Care is a Right

On April 9 the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virgina held an event in their National Discussion and Debate Series at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall. Four participants, including our own Richard Epstein, examined the resolution: "Americans have a fundamental right to health care, and it is the obligation of government to secure that right."

Audio, video, and a transcript of the debate are now available from the Miller Center's website.

The other participants were: JudyAnn Bigby, MD (Secretary of Health and Human Services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), Regina Herzlinger (Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School), and Dick Armey (Chairman of FreedomWorks and former House Majority Leader).The debate was moderated by Susan Dentzer, Health Correspondent for PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Audio: Richard Epstein on How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

On February 22nd, Richard Epstein appeared on the radio show "The Logic Consortium," broadcast on WRFU in Urbana. Prof. Epstein discussed his 2006 book, How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution with hosts (and University of Illinois law students) Matthew Stone, Jacob Briskman and Phil Wagenknecht. You can listen to a recording of the interview here.

Takings, a Second Time

[Cross-posted at PrawfsBlawg.com. You can also watch video of Prof. Epstein discussing Supreme Neglect, courtesy of the Cato Institute.]

In 1985, I published my book, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (1985), which promptly received a number of scathing reviews by authors who are best left unnamed for the moment. But I was confident then, as I am confident now, that the approach that I took to the topic was basically correct. The conventional wisdom on that subject went into overdrive to confine the scope of the takings cause so that it did not overrun the rest of the constitution, or create a strong set of imperatives that the political branches would have to observe. My own contrary view was that the clause was as comprehensive and bold as its prose, and that no more than any other broad guarantee in the constitution (think of the First Amendment on speech and religion), it did not deserve to suffer a death by a thousand cuts by judges anxious to preserve broad discretion in the national and local governments to regulate economic affairs or the use and disposition of private property.

Audio/Video: Epstein on Supreme Neglect

On March 6, Richard Epstein discussed his new book, Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property during an event at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Cato has posted audio and video of his remarks on their website. Their description of the event is below.

Returning to the subject that first made him famous over two decades ago, Richard Epstein, the author of Takings, has a new book on property rights. In it, he takes readers from the strongly protective property rights advocated by the Constitution's Framers to the weak property rights supported by progressive and liberal politicians in the 20th century. Using both political theory and economic analysis, Epstein offers a compelling interpretation of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause to draw the connections between property rights, individual liberty, and social progress. And he looks also at the renewed appreciation of property rights that has arisen in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's infamous Kelo v. New London decision.

Update: You can also hear Prof. Epstein discussing Supreme Neglect on "The Insider Podcast," which "explores the mental health field  from the view point of both consumers and practitioners."

Epstein on Two Recent SCOTUS Decisions

Yesterday, at the request of the Federalist Society, Richard Epstein recorded a brief overview of his thoughts on two recent Supreme Court decisions, Riegel v. Medtronic and  Rowe v.New Hampshire. The recording is available here.
 

Richard Epstein on Good Fortune and Bad Luck

The January 2008 issue of Theoretical Inquiries in Law contains an article by Richard Epstein entitled "Decentralized Responses to Good Fortune and Bad Luck." The abstract is below, and you can read the PDF here.

Most forms of egalitarian theory impose on government (and through it other people) to redress the inequalities of fortune that result from bad luck. This Article takes issue with the various forms of this large claim, and argues that decentralized forms of assistance are likely in the long run to do better by the very standards by which egalitarians justify their own program. The alleviation of poverty depends in the first instance on increases in wealth that can only come through private innovation and technological advances. These have in fact produced major improvements in overall well-being, with disproportionate advances for the poor. But if one starts with Dworkin’s unsustainable distinction between option and brute luck, or Nussbaum and Sen’s capability theory, then no egalitarian theory can deliver on the promise to level differences in wealth without seriously compromising overall levels of social welfare. By expanding the scope of government regulation, these proposals open the door to selfish political forces whose political clout ensures that ill-conceived programs, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, frustrate the very goals they hope to achieve. State intervention to redistribute resources should be understood as a last resort for dealing with problems of ill fortune.

Epstein on "Legal analogies and metaphors in a high-tech age"

On January 15, the Financial Times website published an op-ed by Richard Epstein on the use (and misuse) of metaphor in political and legal analysis of issues surrounding new technologies. He writes:

Political disputes over the so-called new media – chiefly network communications and intellectual property – seem to invite a high-tech analysis to reach sound policy solutions.  The initial gambit of most policy analysts is to develop an optimisation model in order to maximise the social welfare that attaches to alternative institutional arrangements over intangible resources.  Implicitly this approach rejects or downgrades more traditional and modest techniques that rely on homely analogies and instructive metaphors. Often times these two techniques are seen as tantamount to doing acrobatics without a net. Absent an overarching theory how can we be sure that two cases with superficial resemblances do not require wildly different solutions?

You can read the full article here.

Epstein in Regulation

The most recent issue of Regulation features Richard Epstein's response to an earlier article by Berkeley's Peter Menell, in which (according to Epstein) Menell attempts "to discredit what he calls the property rights movement for its supposed "absolutist" stance on intellectual property." The issue also features a reply by Menell to Epstein's response.