Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2000
ISSN
0742-7115
Publisher
University of Minnesota
Language
en-US
Abstract
I want to begin by congratulating Randy Barnett on writing The Structure of Liberty,' one of the most radical and provocative works of political and legal theory that I have ever read. I consider myself to be a liberal who prizes liberty. Barnett claims to provide an account of the structure of liberty along with "[t]he liberal conception of justice" and the rule of law.2 His is a radical libertarian account centrally concerned with protecting the fundamental natural rights of property, first possession, freedom of contract, and self-defense. In Barnett's world, the fabled libertarian night-watchman state has been downsized and privatized: It is a world of private courts, private police, and private prisons where inmates work to earn enough money to pay restitution to their victims.
Recommended Citation
James E. Fleming,
The Parsimony of Libertarianism
,
in
17
Constitutional Commentary
171
(2000).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2766