Cassting Out Liberty

Accuracy in Academia ^ | December 28, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

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Cassting Out Liberty

Bethany Stotts, December 28, 2009

At a recent CATO book discussion, one of the think-tank’s scholars condemned Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “regulatory czar,” for coauthoring what is an argument against individual rights.

“Consequently, according to Cass Sunstein, there are no rights whatsoever, which I think actually is the logical outcome of his entire legal theory, is the elimination of rights,” said Tom G. Palmer at the December CATO event. In the book he referenced, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, Sunstein and New York University Professor Stephen Holmes argue that all rights are positive rights, or “amount to entitlements defined and safeguarded by law.” Thus, a right isn’t a right if it is not enforced by the government.

In The Cost of Rights Sunstein and Holmes also argue that there are no negative rights, and write that “No right is simply a right to be left alone by public officials.”

“I disagree very strongly. You can have a right that’s violated. It’s a meaningful thing to say victims of rights had their rights violated,” argued Palmer, the author of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History and Practice.

As Accuracy in Academia has previously reported, Prof. Cass Sunstein has argued that animals should be able to sue, opposes hunting, suggested in Nudge that government neither issue nor recognize marriage licenses, has argued that the ability to create “an informational or communications universe of your own choosing is “a problem from the standpoint of the First Amendment,” and has advocated for “public spaces on the internet.”...