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
Books
How can we make better decisions—especially when the stakes are highest? In Judgment Calls, historian Zachary Shore tackles this timeless puzzle with intellectual daring and uncommon range. Known for his work on peace and war, Shore has never limited himself to a single discipline.
October 1, 2026
Articles
The world breathed a sigh of relief when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—November 11, 1918—the guns fell silent. The Great War, as World War One was then known, was over in Europe.
November 11, 2026
Articles
This Monday marks thirty-six years since the beginning of the end of the Cold War. In the excerpt below from Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, I recall watching the Iron Curtain part while serving in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, a unit charged with border surveillance and control along the East-West German border and the West Germany-Czechoslovakia border.
November 10, 2026
