I spent this weekend in a law conference organized by Front Range Objectivism. The speakers were first rate, we had both academics and practitioners, and the topics complemented each other from the very abstract to the very applied. Tara Smith talked about the different doctrines on interpreting the constitution held by legal scholars today. Some of these doctrines are clearly non-objective, and even though originalism claims the high ground on objectivity, Tara Smith showed why this is not the case. Eric Daniels talked about unenumerated rights, the history of the 9th and the 14th amendment, and how the cases decided by the supreme court have radically changed the view of rights by today’s courts. It was shocking to discover that modern courts treat the 9th amendment as meaningless, and think of rights as a laundry list, whereas the original intent was to think of government powers as a laundry list. Dana Berliner talked about the case of Kelo vs. New London (which she litigated working for the Institute for Justice), what this meant for property rights, and what we can expect in the near future. Amy Peikoff talked about the history of our idea of privacy as a right, and made an interesting case for subsuming all the protections which currently fall under privacy under more fundamental rights, such as life, liberty and property.
I came away of this conference with a much better understanding of how constitutional law works. Also, I was very encouraged to find out that even though the supreme court went the wrong way on Kelo vs. New London, the awareness of the issue and shift in public opinion that came from the high profile case has done more to damage eminent domain than a supreme court ruling in favor would have done. Polls found out that 98% of people from all political persuations believe that the use of eminent domain for private undertakings is wrong. So any politician who wants a chance at getting elected or reelected is going to have to address this. As we speak, many states (including Colorado) have initiatives to make this illegal at the state level. The Institute for Justice has created the Castle Coalition site to report on eminent domain abuses, and watch the progress of the movement against it. One thing I sugested to Dana was to put up a list of the companies that benefit from eminent domain on this site, so I can avoid doing business with them whenever possible, and also, so I can short their stock.