LiberaLaw

During the next two to three weeks, I will be completing work on “In Defense of the Anarchist,” which has been accepted for publication in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies . The paper is a response to Mark Murphy’s critique of moral and epistemological arguments against the authority of law; I suggest that the anarchist is on better footing than Murphy supposes. Professor Murphy has already offerd me some thoughtful, helpful observations. I am continuing to reflect on the best way to take account of these observations. But I would be very pleased, at the same time as I decide how best to respond to Professor Murphy, to hear from readers of this blog who might see ways in which the paper could be improved or who can think of arguments I would do well to address. Please let me know if you'd like to take a look. Thanks a lot to those who opt to offer comments.

I'm dismayed, but I probably shouldn't be surprised, at the paucity of coverage being afforded to the hearings the House Judiciary Committee began today on Dennis Kucinich's proposed impeachment resolutions (I've linked to a page displaying only some of Kucinich's proposals). It's not just the New York Times (the word "impeach" doesn't appear anywhere on the electronic front page of America's purported newspaper of record). It's leading liberal blogs, including the Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Washington Independent, and Matt Yglesias. To their credit, Glenn Greenwald and Kagro X on Daily Kos give the hearings something like the extensive treatment they deserve, and Politico's John Bresnahan discusses some of the day's developments helpfully, too. It's hard not to see the deafening silence as a reflection of the intra-Beltway consensus that sensible people really can't take seriously the notion of impeaching a ...

This blog is called LiberaLaw because I’m a law professor, because I want to talk about issues related to law, and because I’m a liberal. Liberal can mean lots of different things. I use it to signal the fact that I’m for freedom and against subordination, exclusion, and privation. The political convictions I endorse as an idiosyncratic left-wing market anarchist place me—whether altogether accurately or not—well within the lower left quadrant of the Political Compass . But I hope people from across the spectrum will feel welcome here—left-liberals, classical liberals, libertarians, social democrats, anarchists of all stripes, Burkean and Humean conservatives, socialists, monarchists, minarchists, Marxists, paleocons, crunchy cons, and anyone else who wants to participate, and perhaps to find some unexpected common ground.