Ever wonder what it’s really like to be a criminal prosecutor in a city like Chicago? Felony Review is a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the years Randy Barnett spent as a young prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office during the late 1970s and early 1980s—an era of violent crime and widespread corruption in the criminal courts of Chicago.With firsthand immediacy and sharp insight, Barnett recounts the murder investigations, grisly police station confess...

A concise history of the long struggle between two fundamentally opposing constitutional traditions, from one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars—a manifesto for renewing our constitutional republic.The Constitution of the United States begins with the words: “We the People.” But from the earliest days of the American republic, there have been two competing notions of “the People,” which lead to two very different visions of the Constitution.Those who view “We t...

A Federalist Notable Book“An important contribution to our understanding of the 14th Amendment.”—Wall Street Journal“By any standard an important contribution…A must-read.”—National Review“The most detailed legal history to date of the constitutional amendment that changed American law more than any before or since…The corpus of legal scholarship is richer for it.”—Washington ExaminerA...

Volume II of The Rights Retained by the People explores how the Ninth Amendment affects the proper way of interpreting the Constitution as a whole.Contributors: Sotirios A. Barber, Michael W. McConnell, Sanford Levinson, Stephen Macedo, Andrzej Rapacznski, Thomas C. Grey, Lawrence G. Sager, Morris S. Arnold, Earl M. Maltz, Susanna Sherry, Calvin R. Massey, Thomas McAffee and Raoul Berger.Together with Volume I, which covers primarily the history and ...

A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ...

In this book, legal scholar Randy Barnett elaborates and defends the fundamental premise of the Declaration of Independence: that all persons have a natural right to pursue happiness so long as they respect the equal rights of others, and that governments are only justly established to secure these rights. Drawing upon insights from philosophy, economics, political theory, and law, Barnett explains why, when people pursue happiness while living in society with each other, they confront the...

What is liberty, as opposed to license, and why is it so important? When people pursue happiness, peace and prosperity whilst living in society, they confront pervasive problems of knowledge, interest, and power. These problems are dealt with by ensuring the liberty of the people to pursue their own ends, but addressing these problems also requires that liberty be structured by certain rights and procedures associated with the classical liberal conception of justice and the rule of law. In...

The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government. From the Commerce Clause, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, to the Ninth ...

Written by a leading expert in the field, The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts provides students with ready access to the basic doctrines of contract law, the story behind their evolution, and the rationales for their continued existence. An engaging book that allows students to grasp the "big picture" of contract law, it is organized around the principle that lies at the heart of contracts: consent. Beginning with the premise of "consent," the book provides a cohesive ...

From prosecuting murderers in Chicago, to arguing before the Supreme Court, to authoring more than a dozen books, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has played an integral role in the rise of originalism—the movement to identify, restore, and defend the original meaning of the Constitution. Thanks in part to his efforts, by 2018 a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices self-identified as "originalists."After writing seminal books on libertarianism and contract la...

Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendment's key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws.Ant...

The foundational text of libertarian thought, named one of the 100 Most Influential Books since World War II (Times Literary Supplement)First published in response to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has since become one of the defining texts in classic libertarian thought. Challenging and ultimately rejecting liberal, socialist, and conservative agendas, Nozick boldly asserts that the rights of ...