A while back Gene Healy wrote an outstanding article on LRC in which he debated the Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon on the 14th Amendment. Pilon and his Cato colleagues are “libertarian centralizers,” in that they believe (against centuries of evidence) that a stronger federal government, through enhanced judicial powers, can somehow expand, and not diminish, freedom. Thus, they champion broader use of 14th Amendment jurisprudence in the hope that federal judges will someday become libertarians. (Honest, I’m not making this up; read them for yourself). One of Pilon’s arguments, which is always made by libertarian centralizers, is that the 14th … Continue reading Fourteenth Amendment Update