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 Fleming,
The Parsimony of Libertarianism
,
in
17
Constitutional Commentary
171
(2000).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2766