John Colet on Law and Liberty

Law, liberty, and Christian morality

There is a long liberal political tradition of marshalling arguments aimed at convincing Christians that distinctively Christian reasons for issuing coercive laws are not sufficient to justify those laws. In the first part of this paper I argue that the two most popular of these arguments, attributable to Locke, will not reliably convince committed biblical Christians, nor, probably, should the...

John M . Olin Center for Law , Economics , and Business on Law Enforcement with Boundedly Rational Actors

This essay, prepared for The Law and Economics of Irrational Behavior (Francesco Parisi and Vernon Smith eds., 2004), examines implications of bounded rationality for traditional economic analysis of public law enforcement. A brief application to the enforcement of employment discrimination laws by public agents is offered. * Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Thanks to Louis Kaplow, Steven ...

On Moral Liberty

Judges , commerce and contract law by John Gava

This question received a powerful impetus with the publication of Stewart Macaulay’s pioneering study in 1963 into the use of contract law in the market place. Macaulay looked at the contracting practices of businesses in Wisconsin and found that many entered into agreements that didn’t satisfy the requirements of contract law and would not, therefore, be enforceable in the courts – and that th...

The Freeman Ideas on Liberty

O n average, Federal Reserve chairmen come and go at about the same rate as U.S. presidents. Dating from the creation of this country's central bank (1913), we have seen sixteen presidents (Wilson to Bush) and fourteen Federal Reserve Chairmen (Hamlin to Bernanke). The Fed Chairmanship, however, has seen more variation in years of service—Franklin D. Roosevelt notwithstanding. Spanning four pre...