Jamal Greene: belief

Transcript context

…Sure. You might think there could be some particular kinds of frauds that would proliferate in the less regulated regime. But you still, at the same time, might hold the opinion there’s a right to economic liberty, and you can contract for your interior design with the persons you want. It’s not creating any overriding danger to the polity, or it’s not eliminating all licensing for all doctors. It’s just something one can live with. If you want to make your living that way, that’s your right to do so. Why isn’t that just prima facie correct? I wouldn’t deny that that’s prima facie correct. I would phrase it slightly differently, or frame it slightly differently, which is to say that people do have a basic right to the government justifying when it regulates them. I don’t feel a need to label that as a right. Labeling it as a right carries some baggage, and maybe makes people have greater expectations of how far they can go than I think is healthy. But yes, absolutely, if there’s no good reason to regulate, then the government shouldn’t regulate. There are some issues with a regime of that sort. As a US lawyer, people will throw Lochner v. New York at that kind of system. But to my mind, the problem in the Lochner case — which is this famous legal case from 1905 about maximum hours law which the court struck down — is not that the court should never strike down maximum hours laws. It’s that that particular law was well justified. The battle over these things should be a battle over justification, not a battle over whether people have rights. I think people do have rights to contract and economic rights and so forth. As you probably know, for minor league baseball, a lot of labor law just doesn’t apply. People can work — if work’s even the right word — all crazy hours at very low pay, and nothing from the state intervenes. It’s considered partly an apprenticeship for many people.…

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