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mcnamara-241x300.pngRobert McNamara, who addressed a Students for Liberty conference in Denver on November 10, spoke to TOS about a court case he’s litigating to protect the rights of cab companies to enter the market.

McNamara, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), represents Mile High Cab in a Colorado case likely to have implications elsewhere. “This is important nationwide,” McNamara said; “Colorado’s 2008 reforms [legislation at the base of the case in question] were part of a national trend toward more taxi freedom. . . . What the Public Utilities Commission is doing in Colorado is trying to fight back against this tide of freedom.”

NcNamara also explained how IJ’s litigation involving taxis relates to the organization’s broader mission of defending economic liberty.

We who advocate property rights and free markets owe thanks to McNamara, and all of IJ’s attorneys, for fighting so hard, smart, and successfully in defense of these values.

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*** Mod's note: Merged with another topic. -sN ***

 

 

p_sherman_8229-300x270.jpgIn her Philosophy in Action podcast on Wednesday, philosopher Diana Hsieh interviewed Institute for Justice attorney Paul Sherman on the topic of free speech in elections. The interview is remarkable in how clearly it presents the core issues of campaign finance restrictions.
Sherman deftly explains the various legal restrictions on speech relating to campaigns and highlights the ways in which these laws, far from hampering only political candidates, are a rights-violating injustice against ordinary citizens engaged in political speech.
For example, at one point in the interview Hsieh and Sherman discuss an appalling Colorado campaign law requiring political activists to complete disclosure procedures so onerous that the process is “like filing your taxes every two weeks”—leading many would be political advocates to forgo the effort entirely.
In a memorable quote, Sherman expresses how campaign finance laws violate the Constitution:


We [at the Institute for Justice] like to say that under the First Amendment the only thing you should need in order to talk about politics is an opinion—but thanks to campaign finance laws, you also need a lawyer and an accountant and all these other people to help you deal with the bureaucratic requirements.

Later in the interview, Sherman discusses the supposed goal of campaign laws—to promote “transparency and accountability”—explaining that transparency is a value only when it means “keeping track of what the government is doing,” not when it means “keeping track of what private citizens are doing.” He also offers excellent responses to typical arguments of supporters of campaign finance laws (e.g., “money isn’t speech” and “corporate speech isn’t the same as individual speech”) and provides an informative explanation of Super PACs, how they work, and why they aren’t a problem.
The interview is a clear and entertaining primer on campaign finance law and a great resource for advocates of free speech.
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Image: Institute for Justice

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*** Mod's note: Merged with anothjer topic. - sN ***

 

Should Congress pass a “media shield” law to protect news agencies such as Fox News and the Associated Press from the sorts of government actions recently taken against those organizations by the Department of Justice? The DOJ seized phone records of the AP and seized emails of Fox News’s James Rosen.

Steve Simpson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, argues that Congress should not pass such a law:

[M]edia shield laws are a mistake, because they treat freedom of speech like a privilege to be doled out by politicians like so many special interest perks. What Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. We ought not bargain so freely with our rights. . . . The fact is, the First Amendment was designed to protect speech in its many forms from government intervention. We don’t need special laws to protect all this speech. We just need to take the First Amendment seriously.

As Simpson points out in the linked article, the Supreme Court rightly recognized in the Citizens United case that the First Amendment protects the speech rights of groups of people as well as lone individuals. (As Wendy Kaminer of the Atlantic notes, the Citizens United decision also upholds the right of the ACLU, a corporation, to “challenge the NSA’s domestic surveillance” program in court.)

American’s concerned with protecting their right to freedom of speech would do well to read Simpson’s article and share it far and wide. And we would do well to oft-repeat its central point: We already have a perfectly sufficient law pertaining to freedom of speech in this area. That law states, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .” We just need to insist with our voices and our votes that government abide by that law.

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The Institute for Justice has won a small victory in defense of property rights. The SCOTUS ruled against a law by which the government took a percentage of every raisin crop. [Aside: So much crap goes on forever in the government's bureaucracy, it boggles the mind.]

 

IJ's wins tend to be tiny, but U.S. judges (both democrats and republicans) have long forsaken the broad principle of protecting property from government taking. Our courts could rule this way on raisins but will not apply the same principle when COSTCO or Pfizer gets a local government to take someone's home. Still, we can hope that they will apply the raisin ruling to something that is close: figs? Perhaps the fissure can grow so that in a few years they will apply it to milk and cheese (yes, I'm an incurable optimist). Any sarcasm is directed toward the SCOTUS, not at IJ.

 

I cheer IJ on. With pragmatism rampant, a bottom-up fight seems just as important as a top-down one for the right principles. Each win takes out a few more rules, people  and bureaucracies who support the usurpation of property rights, making it slightly easier for a pragmatic judge (one day) to apply the principle more broadly.

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