there is a part of the registration in europe. it's all of the c countries. poland is so dangerous as for my country but for us, for germany it's voluntarily. surprised oh no we have registration of combustion engines. everything only electric. and he's happy about this? china they produce a much cheaper cars, electric cars that we do. isn't that crazy? it's not easy it causes also a lot of problems. ask the general reader what are

they going to learn from your book about vietnam and poland? >> the first of all development aid does not help. i have a chapter about this because a lot of people think we should give them more development aid. i have a chapter benefit aid is absolute wasted there are no countries that need more development aid than the united states and germany. they need so much development it's always this money. you knof there's a disaster happen to help, of course you should do. but it doesn't help. this conference to escape poverty is this is a first lesson. the next lesson is our book starts with adam smith. and adam smith wrote his the wealth of nations 250 years ago. and key message was that the only way to escape poverty is economic growth.

and the most important precondition for economic is economic freedom. and i think it's amazing. are is proof, right? if you read this the history about fayetteville poachers and you know i think the book is good for people a lot of people they don't like it economy because it's so abstract with theory here you find zero theory and not i promise one not even one massive math problem. so it's about history you it's about history, you know? they televise their story. not answer. >> generallyak speaking, how do nations create negative or positive conditions for economic growth? hen you think of

a central government, what can it do in your view for connotations or for positive results? i will give you a metaphor as a historian, i look at history. it's like test. you know, every country. there is no pure socialist man. you not a capitalist. nowhere in the world, even in north korea, they have a little private property. you talk about. and in the united states, people in europe, they think the united states is, this is this. you are a capitalist hundred percent. you know, it's crazy you have a lot of socialism in every country. you have a mixture of socialism and capitalist markets and state. and i as i look what if you add more market you have this three examples. for example, poland and vietnam all when you add small states. i will give you another example. this venezuela venezuela was not in the seventies, one of the 20 richest countries in the world,

one of the 20 richest countries that you started, regulation, regulations, market regulation, more government, less market. and of course, the situation became worse. and then they made a big mistake. they voted for hugo chavez. the end of nineties, and he started with even more government nationalization answer on what happened. you know, they a couple of years ago the inflation of 1,000,000% 1 million and now 8 million people escaped from venezuela million. this is 28% of the population escaped because. so you see what happens. you're you're in this test group you had small market vietnam poland things become good small government as it did in venezuela it's bad it sounds maybe a little bit simple but it is that that simple sometimes how escape poverty is the name of the book vietnam, poland and the origins of prosperity rayner's. eidelman has been our guest thank you thanks a lot. i appreciajoining us now on boos

randy barnett, his 12th book is entitled a life liberty the making of an american originalist. randy barnett the new york times described you as a passionate libertarian. is that fair? absolutely i am a libertarian and. i am very passionate. i'm passionate liberty. i'm passionate about country. i'm passionate about constitution and how should be construed according to its original meaning, would actually serve the purpose of protecting the individual liberties of. all our people. have you always been a libertarian? i was originally a conservative at the age of 12. as i describe in the book, i debated on behalf of barry goldwater in front of my entire junior high school grade school student body, several hundred students. i was 12 years old in my 12 year old heart. i knew he was right and so i was a very passionate conservative i was a william f buckley. i read national review.

and then when i got to college during my junior year, i ran across libertarianism. the book tells the story about how i became introduced to libertarianism actually at first a friend of mine told me about it and i told her, you know, i'd want to hear about this. and the reason why is that the word was weird weird, and i thought it sounded so that was it. but then she brought a speaker to the residential college. we in who would explain libertarianism. i was listening to it and i thought, wow, a rational conservatism. i could go for that. and by my last year, northwestern, i taught a student accredited on libertarian, libertarian ism. so at that point, by my senior year of college i was a libertarian then the book, as the book explains where i went as a first year law student, i had written fan letter to murray rothbard, and when i went to harvard law school, he gave it to a classmate of mine. that guy brought me down to new york and i met the whole libertarian intellectual circle those days and eventually joined the of the center for libertarian studies. all while i was a law student. so i've been a libertarian for a long. so what's the difference being a conservative and being a

libertarian, what kind of depends on what kind of conservative you are, because in fact, the term is very amorphous, could apply to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. but if you want to oversimplify things, there are kind of liberty based conservatives and then there are tradition or are or religious based conservatives that they basically in for first their religious and first their true are based on tradition that that that's where they get their conservatism other conservatives get their conservatism liberty and the concern of liberty and so there's in that sense there's a libertarian in core of at least conservatism. and that's the kind of conservatism was kind of that's the kind of conservative i was. its kind of conservative. my dad, i got my political principles from father as the book charles and so there's an overlap between some conservatives and libertarians that but not all conservatives. well, there's a line in book where is northwestern? where were you raised?

i was raised in a place called calumet city, illinois which is a suburb south of chicago, about 20 to 25 miles south of chicago. but culturally, it's part of northwest indiana. we're on the on the state line road. in fact. when i was a boy, i used to love to ride my bicycle on both sides of the state line, state line road. and so we were culturally part of northwest indiana. and so when i got my sat scores, i went to thornton, fractional north, also jewish, and there were hardly any -- in calumet city in my graduating class of 400, there were four --. but when i got my sat scores and i met with my counselor. he said, oh, with your score at test scores, you could get into northwestern. and i went really? where is that? because as far as i was concerned, he was talking about somewhere in or washington and but that it turns out northwestern is actually in evanston, illinois, on the north side of chicago. i knew from skokie my parents had friends in skokie, but i didn't where evanston was. and so my best friend, jay and i drove up in our car and i saw northwestern had two beaches,

and it was beautiful. and i had at that point, only to go to university of illinois. so i applied to two schools in illinois, which i got into. and then northwestern which i got into, and then they gave me a scholarship that equalized the cost. and i went there and and actually it was i was really glad i did and law school went to law school at harvard law school. i had no particular desire to go to harvard, any other school. again, i got a great outside score and it turns out i could get into harvard law school. but the reason i the main reason went to harvard, apart from the fact that, well, you know it's harvard, is that i did plan to spend my entire life as a criminal lawyer in chicago. i love chicago, and i plan to spend life there. and i really thought that if i didn't go away at some point in my life i would always feel like i wonder if i just stayed here out of inertia. so going away to the east coast meant that if i went back to chicago it was intentional and it was choice i made not just a default position. and that is what happened. i did go back to chicago and i became a prosecutor in the cook county attorney's office there.

randy, you mentioned calumet city. you mentioned being jewish. you have a chapter, your book entitled dirty --. yeah, well, one of the benefits of growing up in calumet city, as opposed to growing up in scarsdale or westchester county or skokie, illinois for a --, is that we're not under the misleading impression that we're some kind of large number of people where if a third of the group or or a half of the group i think american -- sort of unrealistic. and i felt way at the time. so it's sort of an unrealistic vision of our of our place and our in this vast country of, ours growing up far out of, you know, the school class of four out of 400, it's different lesson. and the lesson started for me, when i was in second grade on the playground, my grade school and one of the my fellow classmates called me dirty --. and then i hauled off and hit him and we got a fistfight and we were both punished for this fist fight. and it wasn't until years later that it finally dawned on me it's quite possible that he

didn't. i was jewish and he was barnet. i don't look that jewish. and it was just he was just insulting me with something he'd heard at home. but i vowed at that time that i would anybody i'd physically fight anybody who called me a dirty --. well as time went by the, tough guys got a lot tougher and i was never really not that tough anyway. and so i revised my policy against fighting anybody who might call me something. you try to avoid fights if possible, but then not backing down for any fights that might occur to me that might that any fights that sought me out, i wouldn't back down. i tell some of those stories here. and so there was an undercurrent of anti-semitism there, which was normal. i mean, i just want to stress this was telling my city was not an aberration, was attrition. it was a polish catholic town. the poles were never historically all that fond of the --, and neither were many of the families that that raised kids that i went to school with. nevertheless i love being from calumet city. i go back to my school reunions. i spoke at my last high school

reunion, i was moved by the response i got from the these those are my people. and i wouldn't be the person i am. i wouldn't be the man i was if i hadn't grown. i became a with the very special people who were there. what was the first case you argued in front of the supreme court. and how did you do? well, the first case, i argued, is only case. i argued. so i've had cases that i've worked on as a litigator since i've a law professor, and all three of them went to the supreme court. i tell the story of all three, the oakland cannabis buyers case, which i did not argue than the gonzalez versus reyes medical marijuana case out of california, which i did argue. and then the final one, which also didn't argue, was nfib versus valley is the obamacare challenge. now, people, if a person has three cases that go to court, they must be doing a lot of litigation. but no, i just three cases and all three went to the supreme court. i consider myself and force first and foremost an academic and a scholar, someone who writes and does theory of the theory of libertarianism. the theory of originalism.

that's what i do but that's how i did it in. the medical marijuana case we lost. case 6 to 3. we did get the votes of chief justice rehnquist and justice o'connor and justice thomas in some sense. i beat spread because i think most people have figured that i was going to get no votes or one vote. and by getting votes, if we're in vegas now. so if there was a betting odds on it, i could have bet that as to what the spread would and i would have beat the spread, i actually made this joke. paul clement, who's now an extra and esteemed litigator who i argued against in that, and i made this joke about how i beat the spread and his retort to me was, well, i've the case and he's but one of the lessons of the book, considering that that was ostensibly a loss on paper. nfib the obamacare challenge was a loss on paper. one of the messages in the book is we in some respects we really won both cases an important way, and we won the medical marijuana case because medical marijuana,

when i first got involved in the late nineties was a very crank fringe issue because that was the reaction i got from people when they heard i was doing it by time we were done with our litigation in 2005, it was a pretty mainstream issue and we've gone from that point to where most states have met legal medical marijuana and where there's appropriation rider on the government that prevents the doj from enforcing marijuana in states that have medical marijuana, that's a pretty big victory. and our case platform. the issue and particularly for my client angel rates he made a great deal of her platform and that really advanced the public policy issue. we also beat back the theory of the government as to why they had the power to do what they did. and if that theory had been accepted, basically the government, the federal government would have no limits on it. so we also won to the extent that the court did not give them, they asked for the same thing sort of happened with the nfib versus sebelius. the obamacare challenge, which i talked about near, the end of the book and all that went into

that challenge. i was grateful not to argue that case. the pressure of the first case was so enormous that i had no to argue. the second case, i didn't but i was one of the lawyers for the nfib, and in that case, we won on the law, had five votes that are that an individual insurance mandate was unconstitutional. and usually when you win on the law, you the case. and if you've lost case, it's because they rejected your version, the law. but we won on the law. we had five votes, but we lost the fifth vote on the outcome because justice roberts said, well, it was a purchase mandate. it would be unconstitutional like you say, but i can reasonably it to be a option to buy health insurance or pay a modest tax, in which case it's not a regulation, commerce, and therefore it's constitutional. and that's how we ended up losing the case. but in a way, our victory was in some sense even greater number. we got five votes for the idea that purchase mandates are unconstitutional purchase mandates unconstitutional. because of that case, congress can do a lot things, but they

can't do that anymore. but they tried to do that was a pretty big victory. that's what i was really fighting for. and the other thing is we, got the court to reject the government's argument, which was adopted by 99% of all law professors that essentially gave them a national problems. power gave congress a national problems, and the court definitively rejected that and reaffirmed that we are a government of limited and enumerated powers. that was another big victory that came out of that case. unfortunate we lost on the obamacare piece of it. but i'll take the constitutional piece if i can get it over the policy. so what is your day job. my day job? i'm a law professor. i teach law. i teach at georgetown i love teaching at georgetown. i have great students there. i teach constitutional law, teach a seminar called recent books on the constitution it's like the tv of seminar where i invite five authors to talk about their books with my students. and we read we take two weeks to read each book, and it's a wonderful course.

and so that's what i do. and though i could retire if i wanted to, i don't part because i have a i a personal trainer to keep me physically in shape, exercise every day. i have a regime fitness regime, but teaching is like a fitness regime for your mind. and it's getting up in front of 70 or 80 really bright students and having to present things to you and be by them. that i think keeps mentally fit and i'm hoping will prolong my year my productive years. how often. do you serve as an outside counsel? hardly ever as i said earlier, i really don't think of myself as a constitutional litigator. i am an academic person foremost. i write books. this is my book. the next book, after that will be a sequel. when i discuss just my time as a criminal prosecutor in chicago, which had to be cut out of this because of space. and then the book after that is going to be a reconsideration or an updating of originalism. i had a piece on life, liberty on july 2nd called

libertarianism and updated, which was based on the afterword of this book, which i ask, what's next for? originalism? what's next for libertarianism and what's next for american --? i to address that at the end of this book, but that these are all pieces of future work for. and so what i would like to do as sort of maybe the capstone of my book writing, i started my first book was about libertarianism was called the structure for liberty, the i'm sorry, it was not it was called the structure of liberty justice in the rule of law, published by in 1998. that was my first book, and it's possible my last will be libertarianism. revisit it why it's not it's not an abandonment of libertarianism, but it's about how the principles need to be rethought and updated. the libertarian theory that people know of as libertarianism really was what i was involved with. as a law student in developing, and it's been somewhat frozen in amber for about 50 years, and it needs to be. how would you like to see it updated? well needs. for example, libertarianism is a state of nature theory based on

natural rights. i believe in natural rights, but i also think it's necessary to bring natural law the idea of human and what it takes to be a human, which includes what it takes to be a human in society with others. and so they could they natural rights perspective should be supplemented by a natural law perspective. and they have about four other things that i think be thought about, which i describe on this piece that you can read on law and randy barnett, as a law professor and a libertarian, how do you answer the question, why should we rely on 1220 old white dead guys who wrote the constitution 250 years ago? okay, great question. i've heard it before. and i will just say this. the constitution that we need to debate about is not the original constitution. it is the constitution have today. and the constitution have today was amended 27 times to be an original means you want to see the original meaning of the constitution enforced whenever

that meaning was added to constitution. so the original meaning of the 14th amendment dates back to 1868. my last book was the was called the original meaning of 14th amendment. it's letter and spirit published by harvard university press. and that was all about what that meaning was. and so we don't need to privilege. maybe we spend a little too much time talking the founders, and we should talk a lot more about republicans who gave us the the republicans of their newly formed republican party, who gave us the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments having said all that. i do think. the people that happened to write the constitution were extremely smart and they were extremely knowledgeable and well-educated about political theory. and that's the reason why they actually devised a system of government that was unique in its time. it some degree remains unique and it's uniquely good, but only if it's followed and. part of the problems we have with our government is that there have been important chunks of the constitution, which is

what i call the lost constitu ation in one of my books, restoring the lost constitution that have just been ignored or discarded. and if we would be a better society, we would. we would better if we could bring back all the parts of the constitution and activate them all. and that's part of the mission of i have as an originalist is to revive the lost constitution. all of it. does the bill of rights stand, in your mind, does it stand? the bill of rights is important? it was something that the federalists did not necessarily to add. it was put into the constitution because of the anti-federalists. but when the federal that there was the federalists wrote the bill of rights. but the anti federalist wanted were a bunch of amendments that would limit federal government. but the said we just set up this stronger federal because that's what we need. so can we satisfy the concern of the anti-federalists and remember, at the time they were writing this, there were two states that had refused to join union. north carolina had not joined rhode island, had not tried. so in the first congress, met to consider whatever were doing,

you set up the government. they only had 11 states, not 13. and what james madison is, we know these people don't trust us. we promised them. we give a bill of rights when in order ratify the constitution. and so we need to honor our promise. but the way they honored promise was not to affect and explains this is not to pull back our powers, but to the individual rights that people have. and so that's the one reason why the bill of rights we have is focused on individual rights, because they could mollify the critics by giving them a bill of rights without, weakening the structures of government that they establish. and that's the reason why the anti-federalists were all dissatisfied with the amendments, because, well, all this is giving us is our individual rights. we already have our rights, but it turns out over time, the anti federalists were right. as governmental powers have expanded beyond the original meaning of the constitution, we become more and more dependent on the rights that happen to be included in bill of rights. so we can thank the

anti-federalists pushing for that. what's it like to be? a libertarian at georgetown? it's wonderful. it's great my colleagues are great. my colleagues treat me with respect. people think that if you're in a minority, a minority in legal education or even in undergraduate education, must be put upon all the time. but if you're nice to them. they'll usually be nice you back. and i haven't really had any unpleasantness with my colleagues. we have our disagreements internally about internal matters and concerning faculty governance, but politically i basically leave them alone and they leave me alone. and my job there is really to focus my students not really on my colleagues my job. there is to be a resource for them to be a voice for them when they get into trouble. and i've been able to successfully do that and i get nothing appreciation from expressed by my colleagues. you write in a life liberty that when antonin scalia you went out and got drunk. yes, i actually met i first met

antonin scalia when i was a research fellow at the university of chicago. as i described, i became a law professor and i sat on his contracts class because i knew i wanted to teach contract law. so that's when i first got to know him. i got to know him more a justice. when i came to georgetown, i had not realize until the day he died. how fond has become of him on a personal level? i didn't. it just sort of snuck up on me. i knew him. i liked him, but i didn't really. he came to my recent on the constitution class and talked about his recent book on reading law. he at georgetown, another he died. my coauthor josh blackman called to tell me the news. i was obviously affected in ways that i had not really comprehended. and then i got i immediately got a call from cbs news to do the nightly news to talk about his legacy. and i said, sure, which would i want to do? and they were sent a car to get me and take me to the studio and i'm showering to get ready to go on the air to you already get picked up. and i realized, i can't do it.

i'm just too emotional i can't go on tv now and talk about him. i just can't do it. and so i called him back and i said, i'm really sorry, but i just can't do this. and then i walk bike with my wife was out of town. i couldn't commiserate with her. and i walked to a bar, connecticut avenue, and just proceeded to have a series of martinis. and i got sloshed in commemoration of antonin scalia, nino. and i think. nino would have approved on the macro level, what's your take on the current supreme court. we have the most conservative supreme court in my lifetime, without a doubt have six conservatives on the court. that's unprecedented in my lifetime when. i was a law student taking law constitutional law from larry tribe. i got very off of the constitution i gave up on the constitution at the end of that course, because every time i got to one of the good parts of the constitution, the ninth amendment, the 10th amendment, the second amendment, i, i turned the page of the casebook and would say the supreme court said, well, that doesn't mean

anything and that's not enforceable and we're not going to do anything about that, the lost constitution. so by the time i got, i was at the end the course, i had sort of given on constitutional law generally. and if you had told me then that that was 1975, if you had told me that that 49 years later we would have the court that we now have writing the kinds of opinions they now write, i would have asked what kind of weed you were smoking, because in those days a lot of weed that smoke and i could i would never could have conceived gotten to this point. this is a book that tells the about a first person account about how we got to where we are today. now where we are today is, we have five of the conservative justices who identify as originalism and now they're trying to navigate what they think that means. and they disappoint me a lot. they disagree with each other a lot. and there are opinions that they they reach the us. v trump opinion presidential immunities case, which is not

originalist at all, whether think it's a good outcome or a bad outcome would really would be nice if they had given us. something about the original meaning of the text. the constitution, or there'd been a concurring opinion that did that, which sometimes is what happens. so they don't always do it. sometimes they will use conventional doctrine to reach results that are justified on originalist grounds. but there's a danger doing that because it involves what might call off the books originalism not really do it. you're not showing your work. and that might even be dependent on our originalism, which is where you haven't really done any work. so it's unreliable but nevertheless, it's better to reach conservative results if you're not using conservative i'm sorry, originalist results, even if you're not using originalist reasoning. but then they still do use originalist reasoning. the cfp pb decision, which we had to do with what the meaning of appropriations was in the constitution. strictly originalist written by justice. again, they are not perfect. they're trying to work it out amongst themselves they

disappoint me sometimes, but man, oh man, have we come a long way from when i was in larry tribe class as an originalist? what's your take on the chevron case? well in the book before last, the republican constitution book, i that chevron should be reversed. and so that was 2016. it's eight years later and it's been reversed. so i think that's a good thing. i think that the meaning of the of the law that passed by passed by congress is ultimately something that is for the judges to interpret not for the agencies who supposed to be bound by the law. you don't you have the people who are supposed to be bound by the law be the ones that are interpreting the scope of their own power under the law. that's the reason why the court shouldn't defer to congress on what the scope of congress's power is it should be. deciding that when properly by an individual, you should have a neutral tribunal of justice decide what the how, what the meaning of the law is and apply it to the person who's bound it, which is the administrative agencies. this, however, is not the end of the as it been painted by its

critics because one of the things the court has rejected is the idea that the courts will defer to agency expertise about what are expert about. they're expert about emissions, expert about other kinds of things the courts will still defer to their expertise when they're acting within their their their competence, their subject competence. but they're no more competent to interpret the scope of a statute than a court is. and in fact, that's the specialty. that's what courts are in. so courts are going to decide they're expert in. they'll interpret the law and the administrative agencies will still be left plenty of discretion to decide what they're expert in is the subject matter of their governance. so if somebody picks up current book of life for liberty, the making an american originalist, what are they going to learn? what do you want to tell them? well, the first thing is they're going to see pictures which some people want to see. there's and white pictures throughout the text. and we have a nice color insert of some great color pictures.

here's what there's a lot of things that i learned about myself and about writing from writing it and first thing i think is to think about. the first thing that i think you can learn is how you live a life that makes a difference while remaining true to your principles and still, you know, be happy and not drive crazy. this is an example how somebody as a ten year old kid can start off with a passion for liberty and by 12 years old, arguing for barry goldwater in front of his junior high school class and make a difference not running for office. an idea i had when i young, but i quickly have added. but by being in and but in some respects by being a practicing lawyer or being a criminal prosecutor is how you can leverage life. and one of the takeaways from this that i would everybody, whether they buy the book or not, and that is i think would live a happier life if you lived your life as though you were going to write a memoir about it. because when i sat down to writ