PREVIEW

The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law (Book/ Hardcover)

Product Overview

America's founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn't need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Yet today that right is burdened by a wide array of government rules and regulations that play favorites, rewrite contracts, encourage frivolous lawsuits, seize private property, and manipulate economic choices to achieve outcomes that bureaucrats favor. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government's powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race. It then focuses on the Progressive-era judges who began to erode those protections, and concludes with today's controversies over abusive occupational licensing laws, freedom of speech in advertising, regulatory takings, and much more.

About the Author(s)

Timothy Sandefur is a Principal Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. As the lead attorney in the Foundation's Economic Liberty Project, he works to protect businesses against abusive government regulation. He also works to prevent the abuse of eminent domain, having litigated important eminent domain cases in California, Missouri, and elsewhere, and having filed briefs in many significant eminent domain cases, including Kelo v. New London. He is the author of two books, Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America and The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom And The Law, as well as some 40 scholarly articles on subjects ranging from eminent domain and economic liberty to copyright, evolution and creationism, and the legal issues of slavery and the Civil War. His articles have appeared in Liberty, National Review Online, The Claremont Review of Books, Forbes Online, The San Francisco Chronicle, Regulation, and The Washington Times, among other places. He is an adjunct professor of law at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. In February, 2006, he became one of the youngest attorneys ever featured on the cover of California Lawyer magazine. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including The Armstrong and Getty Show, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, and NPR's This American Life. Sandefur is a graduate of Chapman University School of Law and Hillsdale College.