Past episodes
About Uncommon Knowledge

For more than a decade the Hoover Institution has been producing Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, a series hosted by Hoover fellow Peter Robinson as an outlet for political leaders, scholars, journalists, and today’s big thinkers to share their views with the world. Guests have included a host of famous figures, including Paul Ryan, Henry Kissinger, Antonin Scalia, Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich, and Christopher Hitchens, along with Hoover fellows such as Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz.

Uncommon Knowledge takes fascinating, accomplished guests, then sits them down with me to talk about the issues of the day,” says Robinson, an author and former speechwriter for President Reagan. “Unhurried, civil, thoughtful, and informed conversation– that’s what we produce. And there isn’t all that much of it around these days.”

The show started life as a television series in 1997 and is now distributed exclusively on the web over a growing network of the largest political websites and channels. To stay tuned for the latest updates on and episodes related to Uncommon Knowledge, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

March 30, 2009 | Recorded on March 23, 2009

Crisis and the Law with Richard Epstein

Hoover senior fellow Richard Epstein considers the soundness of contracts and the constitutionality of taxing bonuses at a rate of 90 percent.

Considered one if the most influential legal thinkers of modern times, Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, brings his libertarian views to bear on the current financial crisis—“government incentives were perverse, so the actions of the private parties were perverse”—and rates the performances of George Bush and Barack Obama in their responses to the crisis. He speaks to the importance of contracts and the constitutionality of the “expo facto” taxation on AIG executives and the Employee Free Choice Act embraced by President Obama. Finally he speaks of his personal and professional dealings with Barack Obama when they were law school faculty mates at the University of Chicago. (38:22 ) Video transcript