Classical Liberalism for the Modern Age
In Good Times and Bad

Tuesday, April 3, 2012
4:15–6:00 p.m., Lecture
6:00–7:00 p.m., Reception
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall
UC Berkeley

Map of campus
Campus parking

For questions, please contact
College Relations, College of Letters & Science, (510) 643-1178.

Featured Speaker:

Richard A. Epstein

Inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School

Richard Epstein researches and writes on a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. His most recent book is Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law.

There is no disagreement anywhere on the political spectrum that recent economic times have been hard times.  But many would acknowledge that there is a vast disagreement as to the source of the downturn or the steps that might be used to get us out of it.  In this lecture, Richard A. Epstein argues that what is needed is a steady and firm commitment, in good times and bad, to the basic principles of limited government and private property that drove the American move to greatness. He will explain why all efforts to jump start or fix the economy will only prolong the current economic malaise.  Public jobs programs, extensive real estate regulation, high progressive taxation, strong labor regulation, and protectionist trade policies, all generate prolonged obstacles to systematic growth. Epstein proposes that only a return to a stable configuration of legal rights can neutralize the economic and political uncertainty that derives from modern progressive innovations that have already proved no more successful than their New Deal predecessors.

Respondent:

Robert D. Cooter

Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Robert Cooter began teaching in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley in 1975 and joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1980. He has been a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and is co-editor of the International Review of Law and Economics.

Sponsored by the College of Letters and Science and the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science

The Baxter Liberty Initiative lecture is part of a new program in UC Berkeley’s Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, established by Frank Baxter ’61, which features intellectual leaders whose expertise and scholarship focus on the ideal of freedom in political and economic life.