“America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited” by Sheldon Richman. 2016.   The American abolitionist, and pioneering individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner once wrote of the US Constitution “…this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit…

Considerato che quel poco di libertà di cui ancora godiamo in occidente deriva in gran parte da istituzioni legali in concorrenza tra loro che operavano entro di giurisdizioni sovrapposte secoli fa, è curioso il fatto che tanti libertari pensino ancora che un tale ordine, caratteristica essenziale dell’anarchismo basato sul libero mercato o sul diritto naturale,…

Considering that what liberty we continue to enjoy in the West is a product in large part of competing legal institutions operating within overlapping jurisdictions hundreds of years ago, it’s curious that so many libertarians still believe such an order — an essential feature of free-market, or natural-law, anarchism — would be inimical to liberty. Why wouldn’t…

King John of England, who 800 years ago this week was forced at Runnymede to affix his Great Seal to Magna Carta — which at least in theory subordinated his power to law — might have envied President Obama. Sure, Obama also pays lip service to idea that the executive is subject to law. But…

Monday is the 800th anniversary of the day in 1215 that rotten King John put his seal to the sheet of parchment called the Articles of the Barons — later to be known as Magna Carta — at Runnymede in England. It wasn’t the first charter issued by an English monarch pledging to subordinate his…

The middle of next month will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. My knowledge of the “great charter” is modest, to be sure, but lately I have been reading about it and its legacy. (See the “Liberty Matters” discussion, in which I have a small editorial role, going on this month at Liberty Fund’s…