Books, Arts & Manners: The Ides of April

Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard, 312 pp., $25)

Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, has published widely on the subject of torts. He is also a defender of libertarian values and policies. In his newest book he combines legal scholarship and libertarian conviction to produce a brief against the destruction of property rights in modern America. One of the best-kept secrets in academic circles (I myself learned of it only at age 44) is that the Founding Fathers were as much concerned about protecting property as they were about freedom of assembly and other “civil liberties.” Up until the twentieth century, few legal scholars would have questioned this. That they do so now, according to Epstein, indicates to what degree partisan zeal has overtaken constitutional studies.

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Paul Gottfried

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Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard, 312 pp., $25)

Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, has published widely on the subject of torts. He is also a defender of libertarian values and policies. In his newest book he combines legal scholarship and libertarian conviction to produce a brief against the destruction of property rights in modern America. One of the best-kept secrets in academic circles (I myself learned of it only at age 44) is that the Founding Fathers were as much concerned about protecting property as they were about freedom of assembly and other “civil liberties.” Up until the twentieth century, few legal scholars would have questioned this. That they do so now, according to Epstein, indicates to what degree partisan zeal has overtaken constitutional studies.