Progressive Liberty in the Commons - What is "Progressive" and what is "Liberty"?

A persistent conundrum for those of us with libertarian sympathies is that individual freedom and the common-good seem, almost by definition, to be mutually exclusive.

So how can a concerned individual justify individual liberty when we understand the dynamics of some groups, where individuals acting in their own self-interest make decisions that when combined with the similar self-interested decisions of other individuals tend to despoil the environment (or, beyond environmental issues, where individual aggressive impulses that when combined with similar impulses of others lead to moblike or warlike behavior)?

We may recall that this was the scenario illustrated in Garrett Hardin's classic 1968 essay, "Tragedy of the Commons," in which Hardin concluded that personal self interest, unchecked by any limiting factor, may lead to environmental destruction: "The rational man finds that his share of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of 'fouling our own nest,' so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free-enterprisers." (I explore the issue of the commons and formal property regimes in a 1999 book chapter entitled "Common Property and Natural Resource Management: A Michigan Perspective," which appears in the book series "The Economics of Legal Relationships" (vol. 5)).

"Progressive Liberty" is an attempt to reconcile the seemingly contradictory concepts of individual liberty and the common-good.

Looking first at the "Liberty" part, an excellent place to start is with the "harm principle" enunciated in J.S. Mill's 1859 classic "On Liberty":

"[There is but] one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, … that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others…. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." (I discuss Mill's harm principle in greater detail in a 2005 Willamette Law Review article entitled "Reviving a Natural Right: The Freedom of Autonomy").

Yale professor Ian Shapiro suggests, “think of the harm principle as operating in two steps. When evaluating a particular action or policy, the first step involves deciding whether the action causes, or has the potential to cause, harm to others. If the answer is no, then the action is in the self-regarding realm and the government would be unjustified in interfering. Indeed, in that case the government has a duty to protect the individual’s freedom of action against interference from others as well. If, however, the answer to the initial query is yes, then different considerations arise. We are then in a world in which harm is being committed willy-nilly, and the question is: What, if anything, should the government do about it? In this regard, a more accurate summation of the harm principle than the more famous formulation already quoted [is]: ‘As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such discussion when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself.’” (Shapiro, The Moral Foundations of Politics p.61).

So this is where the "Progressive" part of Progressive Liberty comes in. As Shapiro states, society has jurisdiction over a person's conduct when that conduct prejudicially affects, or harms, the interests of others. In this case it is open to discussion through the democratic process whether the common good will be promoted by regulating the individual's conduct (liberty). Through progressive legislation, then, the society strikes a balance.

It is important to re-emphasize Shapiro's point, however, that short of the point at which a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself , "there is no room for entertaining [memorializing into law] any such discussion." "Liberty" prevails and the individual's autonomy cannot be touched by government.

This last point is crucial, in light of government's unceasing, inexorable, and perhaps-inevitable tendency to interfere inappropriately in individual conduct. (I propose a judicial standard of review to address and counteract this overreaching tendency of government in a 2007 article in the Louisiana Law Review entitled "Government as Liberty's Servant: The 'Reasonable Time, Place and Manner' Standard of Review for All Government Restrictions on Liberty Interests").

Michael Phelps & Unconstitutional Prohibition on Marijuana

The news that Michael Phelps has been outed for hitting a bong at a party raises a couple issues about current laws prohibiting marijuana: they are (1) bad policy; and (2) unconstitutional.

First, state and federal laws criminalizing the use and possession of marijuana are atrocious policy for at least three reasons: (a) the massive costs imposed on lives and public treasuries; (b) low efficacy - i.e, the laws do little to dissuade those who desire to light up from doing so; the (c) crime problems caused by making marijuana a black market commodity.

In policy terms, wouldn't it be better for the government to decriminalize marijuana and regulate much like it regulates alcohol and tobacco? This is what many policymakers - conservative and liberal alike - believe, for a number of reasons: (1) it would reduce crime; and (2) it would be a great moneymaker for government (through taxes on sales, etc.).

So it's time for a change. As Kathleen Parker says in today's Washington Post, "Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we've been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once, according to a report published last year in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

"The U.S., in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, including The Netherlands, where cannabis clouds waft from coffeehouse windows. ...

"Other better-known former tokers include our current president and a couple of previous ones, as well as a Supreme Court justice, to name just a few. A complete list would require the slaughter of several mature forests. ... It's time to recognize that all drugs are not equal -- and change the laws accordingly."

Second - and more seriously - aside from any policy reasons, current prohibitions on marijuana are unconstitutional.

As I've discussed in these pages previously, when a person's conduct affects the interests of no other person besides him- or herself , the government has no business regulating private conduct. When a person is engaged in such behavior, as Yale professor Ian Shapiro says, "there is no room for entertaining [memorializing into law] any such discussion." Liberty prevails and the individual's autonomy cannot be touched by government.

The principle that government only exists in the first place to protect liberty is time-honored. William Blackstone, whose 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England were required reading for America's founders and framers of the Constitution, commented, “every wanton and causeless restraint of [free-will], whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.”

J.S. Mill's 1859 "Harm Principle" is useful as well in conceptualizing the concept: "[There is but] one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, … that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others…. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." (I discuss Mill's harm principle in greater detail in a 2005 Willamette Law Review article entitled "Reviving a Natural Right: The Freedom of Autonomy").

The upshot of all of this is that it is okay for government to regulate, but not prohibit, conduct not harming others.

People using marijuana harm no-one but themselves (and no, generalized "harm to the society" or setting a bad example for The Children don't count - any "harm" must be direct; not just an attenuated claim that its use harms society); accordingly, the government has no business prohibiting its use.

Reconciling Liberty and Progressive Government

Following is a paper I am presenting this week at the Law & Society Conference in Denver, "Reconciling Liberty and Progressive Government," that synthesizes a number my prior postings:


Libertarians with progressive sympathies (or progressives with libertarian sympathies) are confronted by a nagging conundrum: that individual freedom and the common-good, almost by definition, can seem to be mutually exclusive. If we indiscriminately elevate individual free-will, we risk tragedy-of-the-commons issues; by contrast, if we indiscriminately enact progressive legislation for the common good, we run the risk of inflicting death by a thousand cuts on individual liberty.

A concept we may call "Progressive Liberty" is an attempt to reconcile the seemingly contradictory concepts of individual liberty and the common-good. Looking first at the “liberty” half of the phrase, America was founded, first and foremost, to preserve individual freedom from oppressive government. This part is nonnegotiable. America's founding documents - the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - make the point clearly: the single irreducible value eclipsing all else under the American constitutional regime is liberty. The eminent historian Eric Foner explains, “No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than “freedom” … or “liberty,” The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces as its purpose to secure liberty’s blessings…”

Historian Bernard Bailyn reports that the most basic goals of the American Revolution were to “free the individual from the oppressive misuse of power, [and] from the tyranny of the state.” To conceptualize, imagine if you will the “Google-Earth” feature of Google; except here, written answers to basic constitutional questions may be viewed in greater or lesser detail by zooming-in or zooming-out. Zooming-out to view the question, “What single value does the Constitution stand for?,” from the widest possible angle, where all detail has been lost leaving only one answer to the question, the answer would read, “Liberty.” Zooming-in, we could next read, “Equality,” “Democracy,” then “Property,” and so on. These more detailed values are simply means to the ultimate end – which is liberty.

What to do when government intrudes upon liberty? The framers of the Constitution envisioned that the judiciary would play a key role in protecting liberty from majoritarian excess. James Madison, arguing in support of passage of the Bill of Rights before the First Congress, said, “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Addressing a French correspondent, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “the laws of the land, administered by upright judges, … would protect you from any exercise of power unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.” And in Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton commented that “the interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts…. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable difference between [the Constitution and a legislative act]…, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”

This is something upon which judges and scholars from across the political spectrum can agree. Conservative icon Robert Bork, for example, has written that “there are some things a majority should not do to us no matter how democratically it decides to do them. These are areas properly left to individual freedom…. Society consents to be ruled undemocratically within defined areas by certain enduring principles believed to be stated in, and placed beyond the reach of majorities by, the Constitution.”

In practice, however, conservative ideology has latched onto the idea that the use of judicial review is “undemocratic” and “activist”; and will almost always constitute inappropriate “legislating from the bench.” What this argument ignores, of course, is that the whole point of the Constitution’s scheme of majoritarian government in the first place is to protect liberty and equal justice. As explained by Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton, the true original intent of the framers was that constitutionally-protected liberty and equal justice are not to be sacrificed to majority will.

When the Court fails to properly exercise its power of judicial review, liberty and equal justice suffer, because there is simply no other institution left to protect individual and minority rights. During World War I, for example, the Court upheld vast legislative prohibitions on speech; and during World War II it refused to curb executive forced-relocation and internment of thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans. America would look quite different today if the Court – largely under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose strong support of judicial review prompted President Dwight Eisenhower to grumble that his 1953 appointment of Warren to the Court was “the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made” - had not eventually returned to checking the unconstitutional excesses of the democratically-elected executive and legislative branches.

As for the other part of the progressive liberty equation, how are we to understand how progressive government may proceed in acting for the common good? The first thing to understand is that, as compared to non-negotiable liberty, the “progressive” part of progressive liberty IS negotiable. In a democratic republic, it is the will of the people what sort of society they will have. So long as the government is not infringing on individual freedom, it can set widely varying policy - anything from a minimalist caretaker state to a more progressive social welfare model of the sort seen in Western Europe (or indeed, something more different still than either of these).

An energetic position, one that a progressive libertarian would favor, suggests that it is the government's duty to enact humane policy that looks out for people who can't help themselves, and that provides equal opportunity to all. Among other things, this means that government should guarantee that every man, woman, and child have access to basic healthcare. (Incidentally, the framers appeared to be “progressives” of a sort themselves, in that they advocated an energetic government. “Energy in the [government] is a leading character in the definition of good government,” Hamilton wrote in the Federalist 70. Madison agreed. “Energy in government,” he said in No. 37, “is essential to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws, which enter into the very definition of good government.”)

Does this mean that the Constitution mandates such government involvement?In a word: No. The Constitution sets up the republican form of the government and imposes strict limits on governmental infringements of individual liberty; but it leaves the details of social and economic policy to be worked out by the people through the democratic process. Whether the people prefer a Progressive Society, a Minimalist Society, or some other sort of Society, they control their destiny by voting for representatives who will legislate to that end. That's republican democracy: accountable majorities enacting policy; and if the majorities don't adequately reflect the people's wishes, others are elected who will. Then if at any time the democratically-accountable majority legislates in ways that inappropriately infringe individual liberty, the Constitution (as enforced by the Court) steps in. That's what liberty is about - limited government constrained by a Constitution that protects, above all else, individual freedom.

. . .

Now that we have a definition for progressive liberty, let’s look closer at the title of this paper, “Reconciling Liberty and Progressive Government.” Specifically, how are we to know the threshold beyond which a progressive, energetic government may not go, lest it infringe upon constitutionally-protected liberty?

An excellent place to start (and perhaps end) is with the "harm principle" enunciated by J.S. Mill in his 1859 classic, On Liberty:

"[There is but] one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, … that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others…. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Putting this into practical terms that government policymakers can apply, we might “think of the harm principle as operating in two steps,” Professor Ian Shapiro suggests. “When evaluating a particular action or policy, the first step involves deciding whether the action causes, or has the potential to cause, harm to others. If the answer is no, then the action is in the self-regarding realm and the government would be unjustified in interfering. Indeed, in that case the government has a duty to protect the individual’s freedom of action against interference from others as well. [The second step occurs] if, however, the answer to the initial query is yes, [in which case] different considerations arise. We are then in a world in which harm is being committed willy-nilly, and the question is: What, if anything, should the government do about it?,” and it is up to the democratic process to work that out.

In other words, society may legislate – whether progressively or not – either when the legislation (a) simply does not affect individual liberty, and/or (b) when a person’s conduct in exercising individual liberty prejudicially affects, or harms, the interests of others. (Incidentally, some, such as Randy Barnett, would define this latter situation as not involving “liberty” at all, but rather as “license” (which is not protected by the Constitution); on the reasoning that liberty, by definition, cannot harm others). In either case it is open to discussion through the democratic process whether the common good will be promoted. So conceived, the society may strike a balance between liberty and progressive government.

It is important to re-emphasize Shapiro’s conclusion, however (perhaps to the point of tedium), that according to the Harm Principle, “short of the point at which a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, there is no room for [memorializing into law any such policy discussion.]” Individual liberty prevails in such cases, not to be touched by government.

This last point is crucial, in light of government's unceasing, inexorable, and perhaps-inevitable tendency to interfere inappropriately in individual conduct. Alexis de Tocqueville presciently identified the danger of an overactive government in his 1830 masterpiece, Democracy in America, stating: “[In a maturing democracy,] a wholly new species of oppression will arise. Among citizens equal and alike, the supreme power, the democratic government, acting in response to the will of the majority, will create a society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, that none can escape. Ultimately, then, the citizens of a democratic country will be reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” To some in America today, this scenario sounds uncomfortably familiar.

Once again, under our constitutional regime it is the role of the judiciary to prevent this sort of creeping tyranny from occurring. One difficulty, though, is that ever since 1937 the Supreme Court has applied a disproportionately deferential standard of review to government action - to the detriment of individual liberty. (This occurred largely as a backlash to the Supreme Court overstepping its bounds during the mid-1930s when it aggressively struck down FDR’s New Deal legislation. Throughout the rest of the 20th and into the 21st century, the Court has swung too far in the other direction by not going far enough in requiring government (particularly state and local government) to justify its actions that may potentially affect liberty interests.) A more deferential-to-liberty standard of judicial review is needed, perhaps modeled on the Court’s existing First Amendment “reasonable time, place and manner” doctrine, as I suggest in a 2007 Louisiana Law Review piece. This approach, already championed on a narrow basis by the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Lutz v. York in 1990, more accurately honors the Constitution’s core Liberty-first ideals, while also recognizing the proper constitutional role of government in maintaining law and order.

In conclusion, government is liberty’s servant in America. Government – and democracy itself - exists primarily to protect liberty, with the Constitution serving as the bulwark against inevitable government attempts toward overreaching. The framers understood that men are not angels and that power has the overwhelming tendency to corrupt, so they constructed a limited government of separated powers with the ultimate power reserved to the people to operate within their own self-imposed constitutional constraints.

That said, to the extent government action does not implicate liberty, the details of social and economic policy are to be worked out by the people through the democratic process. One can be a staunch supporter of liberty on one hand; while working actively through the democratic process to enact progressive, energetic policy. That, in essence, is progressive liberty.

On Liberty - Ninth Amendment

After covering the Supreme Court's landmark 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case (striking down a state statute forbidding the use and provision of contraceptives to married persons on the grounds that the statute infringes a constitutional right of privacy) in class yesterday, it's worth commenting upon Justice Goldberg's concurring opinion. Goldberg's opinion (alas, only concurring, not majority) was really the most serious treatment of the Ninth Amendment in the Court's history, which is too bad, since it encapsulates well the Constitution's position on Liberty - a position that has been systematically minimized and contradicted throughout the nation's history.

The Ninth Amendment says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

This is an inconvenient provision for those who prefer an approach that would only allow rights that are expressly named in the Constitution, and for those who favor a "government-first" approach that allows government to limit individual freedom virtually at will. For many generations in America, those in power, acting ultimately in the interests of perpetuating their (and their successors') grip on power, have ignored the Ninth Amendment, treating it, as Robert Bork famously said, as of little more consequence than an accidental "ink-blot on the page."

Goldberg got it right in Griswold though, stating, "The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution may be regarded by some as a recent discovery and may be forgotten by others, but since 1791 it has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold.... [A] judicial construction that [a] fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment...."

What then is a "fundamental right"? At root, it is, as Justice Brandeis said in another context, "the right to be let alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." J.S. Mill's "harm principle" is useful here: If individual conduct causes no harm to another, government simply has no business interfering with the conduct, and the Ninth Amendment guarantees the individual the right to be let alone.

In the 40 years since Griswold, the Ninth Amendment has received more interest in the academic literature, but still not really in the Supreme Court.

Until We the People, and our agents in the federal judiciary, take seriously the "Liberty-First" premise embodied in the Ninth Amendment, we'll just continue along our current path, foretold by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1830 book "Democracy in America," where government "spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd…. Rather than tyrannize, [government] inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end reduc[ing the] nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd."

By: Michael Anthony Lawrence

On Tolerance: Christopher Hitchens and "God is Not Great"

The title of a book I'm currently working on is (something like) "Toward a More Tolerant Constitution - Of, By, and For the People" basically arguing that governmental TOLERANCE of individual rights is a (if not the) core animating principle of the U.S. Constitution.

In a related context, Christopher Hitchens hits the nail on the head in his 2007 National Book Award finalist, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (one of my holiday wish-list books):

"[T]he mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the 'meaning' of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them.

And yet - the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what 'he' demands of us - from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction - itself composed of mutually warring factions - has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need...."

"[F]aith ... is the beginning - but not the end - of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning - but by no means the end - of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other.

"For this reason, I would not prohibit [religious faith] even if I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitsvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations.

"And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments.... Religion poisons everything."

How, then, does this passage from Hitchens' new book relate to my own book project? It relates in that the U.S. Constitution was specifically designed as nothing more than a device to prevent others, who claim to know everything under the guise of governmental authority, from destroying all "the hard-won human attainments," whether they be matters of religious freedom of the sort Hitchens speaks, or, more broadly, other precious individual liberties. As Justice Brandeis said in 1928, “The makers of our Constitution … conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

In other words, so long as my beliefs and actions cause no direct harm to others, the Constitution requires the government to "respect" - i.e., to tolerate - those beliefs and actions; in short, any law, regulation, or other government action that fails to so tolerate me and my beliefs and actions is unconstitutional.

The religious focus of Hitchens' book is relevant as well in light of the increasingly dominant - and inappropriate - role religion has come to play in American politics. For evidence, we need only look so far as the disastrous courses on which our evangelical president has steered the nation largely on the basis of his own religious dead-reckoning; and sadly, if the groveling comments toward the religious right of most of the current presidential candidates are any indication, it appears the situation is not soon to change. If this is so, it will be all the more incumbent upon ordinary Americans to speak out loudly and forcefully in protection of the hard-won constitutional liberties.