Libertarian law student group forming in Canada

Libertarian student group Runnymede Society seeks to shake up Canada’s legal culture - The Globe and Mail - Sean Fine:

September 10, 2019 - "A libertarian student group has developed a growing presence in law schools, where it seeks to shake up a legal culture it views as devoutly uncritical of the Supreme Court and established Canadian legal norms. From a tiny group on a handful of campuses three years ago, the Runnymede Society now has a presence on nearly all of the country’s 18 law campuses....

"Similar to the influential Federalist Society in the United States, which also started as a student group, Runnymede has a core view that judges too often are guided by their own political preferences, rather than applying the law. In its first book of essays, published late last month with the provocative title Attacks on the Rule of Law From Within, and in edgy remarks at its events from leading judges, it has sought to spark a debate on some cherished Canadian principles, such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms being a living tree that changes with the times.

"'Obviously the Canadian legal community is a small community, and the game is influencing the influencers, says Joanna Baron, a Runnymede founder and now the executive director of its parent group, the Calgary-based Canadian Constitution Foundation....

"Runnymede, which is non-partisan, has 'partnered' with the Federalist Society for some of its events, accepting speakers from the U.S. group, says Runnymede national director Mark Mancini, whose website biography says he has 'a mandate to shift the legal culture in Canada towards liberty.' (Runnymede is the name of the meadow where the Magna Carta was written in the 12th century.)...

"The Runnymede Society says it is not socially conservative and does not have the Federalist Society’s deep attachment to originalism – the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as its authors intended, rather than according to the living-tree approach widely used in Canadian courts. But it wants students exposed to both views, Ms. Baron says....

"And 'liberty-oriented legal arguments are still seen as outliers.' One example of a liberty-oriented argument comes in the biggest case under way involving the Canadian Constitution Foundation – the eight-year-old Cambie Surgeries case in Vancouver, in which the foundation has retained leading lawyers to argue for a right to private medical care....

"Runnymede Society has a $250,000 annual budget, Mr. Mancini says, and gives charitable-tax receipts through the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which received just more than $5-million in donations in the year ending in March, 2019, from individuals and foundations. The biggest part of those donations was given for the Cambie case, Ms. Baron said....

"With the exception of a grant of about $10,000 from the U.S.-based Atlas Network, which funds groups supporting the rule of law and free markets, it has received no money from foreign sources, Ms. Baron said."

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-libertarian-student-group-runnymede-society-seeks-to-shake-up-legal/
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New British PM assails "libertarian right"

Je suis right-wing libertarian | Coffee House - Paul Nizinskyj, The Spectator:

October 7, 2016 - "On Tuesday night, Conservatives for Liberty, which I co-founded in 2013, hosted our annual Freedom Fizz reception.  Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young joined us, along with 400 party delegates, most of whom identify as right-wing libertarians....

"Twelve hours after we packed up, the Prime Minister effectively declared the lot of us enemies of the party – and the people. The Prime Minister used her keynote speech to attack the ‘ideological templates of the socialist left and the libertarian right’ as enemies of a government which would ‘act on behalf of the people’. Mrs May seemed to be suggesting that people should be just as concerned about entryism from the libertarian right as from the far left.

"It’s not a particularly nice feeling to be told you are unwelcome in a party which you’ve called your home for ten years, but we ought to have seen this coming. My colleagues and I have spent the last three years attacking in the strongest terms Mrs May’s appalling record on civil liberties as Home Secretary, as well as her enthusiasm for state intervention on the economy, but we were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.... How naive we were.

"What the Prime Minister was attempting to do was cast libertarianism as an ideology alien to traditional ‘pragmatic’ Conservatism. But unlike far-left groups ... what we now call ‘libertarianism’ is woven into the fabric of this nation and of the Conservative party. It is a philosophy whose core principles revolve around the liberties enshrined in the Magna Carta of 1215. It was men who believed those liberties to be sacrosanct who took up arms against the King in 1642, and who bound his successors by the Bill of Rights in 1689.

"It was the free-market Liberals of the nineteenth century whose prudent stewardship of the economy made Britain the richest and most powerful country on Earth. It was right-wing libertarians who provided the intellectual foundations for Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of Britain from ‘the sick man of Europe’ to the fifth largest economy in the world (even if the great lady herself would never be known as anything other than a Conservative). And it was in large part right-wing libertarians like our President, Daniel Hannan, who were behind the Brexit Mrs May so wants to make a success of.

"But more importantly for the PM, research shows most young people are right-wing libertarians without even knowing it. Decades of polling by Ipsos MORI has shown ‘Generation Y’ – those born between 1980 and 2000 – are far more likely than their parents or grandparents to be critical of high taxation and the welfare state, as well as to be more liberal on social issues such as gay marriage and gender equality. A growing number of young people within the Conservative Party do know it, however, and will be a key part of any election campaign."

Read more: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/je-suis-right-wing-libertarian/
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Magna Carta and the rise of religious liberty

The Magna Carta & the rise of religious liberty - Stephen Douglas Wilson, Baptist Press:

June 15, 2015 - "Eight hundred years ago on June 15, 1215, a group of English nobles at Runnymede forced a reluctant King John to endorse a document of grievances against royal authority.

"Written by Stephen, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Magna Carta was designed to be a compromise between rebellious nobles and the king. The work contained allusions to protecting religious liberty that, remarkably, would be embraced by England, the United States and much of the West today in subsequent centuries....

"For instance, Article One stated, 'First that we have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired'....

"Among other provisions in the document, Article 22 restricted fines on the private property owned by church clerks to only the value of the particular property without reference to the total value of an ecclesiastical holding in the kingdom....

"Article 27 empowered the church to supervise the liquidation of the property of free men who left no will. This provision probably preserved a practice already in place, but with this provision, the framers formally ensured that that the church, rather than the state, be involved in these personal but important post-mortem decisions.

"Article 62 issued pardons for all (including individual clergymen) involved in the dispute between the crown and clergymen who had joined the rebellion against the king. This continued a pattern within the document of also protecting the rights of clergymen apart from the protections on the church itself -- an important aspect of religious liberty.....

"Other articles that seemingly expanded the privileges of the nobles apparently referenced the clergy as well. Some of these guarantees included provisions for trials in local courts, protections against unlawful seizures of goods or persons, and respect for property rights. The framers of the document noted that all these customs and liberties applied to "all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen.

"For the next few hundred years, various English political figures invoked the Magna Carta in defense of both political and religious liberty rights. Furthermore, the British and American political bodies, building on the lofty but hazy principles of the Magna Carta, eventually added more substantial protections to religious liberty. The British Act of Toleration of 1689 recognized the rights of all Protestants, including Baptists, to practice their faith without interference. In 1791 and 1829, the British Parliament legalized the status of Catholics by the Roman Catholic Relief Acts.

"In the United States, the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791 gave specific protections to religious liberty that included the abolition of religious tests for public office and specific guarantees for citizens to practice their faith. Other Western nations, as well as many non-Western nations, offered similar protections in the years after the 1790s."

Read more: http://www.bpnews.net/44932
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What Magna Carta can teach libertarians about strategy

What Magna Carta Can Teach Us About Libertarian Strategy - Reason.com - Sheldon Richman:

May 24, 2015 - "Magna Carta was an agreement a group of rebellious barons forced on King John on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow on the Thames in England, about midway between London and Windsor Castle....

"The charter is one of those things that virtually everyone across the political spectrum (however defined) has invoked in support of his or her cause. As the scholars point out in the "Liberty Matters" discussion, dissidents have held it up as a shield against tyrants, while kings have used it to defend the legitimacy of their rule. It’s been enlisted in a variety of missions. Advocates of slavery took refuge in Magna Carta, but so did the proto-libertarian Levellers....

"As Magna Carta scholars point out, the interpretation (mythology) and impact of the charter over the last eight centuries are as important as — maybe more important than — the document and the authors’ intentions themselves. Even if it wasn’t actually a charter of liberty, it is regarded as such — by people, as I’ve already noted, who have widely differing views on liberty.

"This has implications for libertarian strategy today.

"That genuine liberty — in the sense of what Roderick Long calls 'equality of authority' — can grow out of efforts intended to achieve something less is worth keeping in mind. I claim no profound insights in the matter of strategy, but I do know that social processes, like the people who actuate them, are complex, and therefore unintended consequences — good and bad — are ubiquitous and to be expected. This makes devising a strategy for social change complicated and more likely impossible. There’s no algorithm for changing a society from unlibertarian to libertarian. We have no script. That’s an argument for the 'let a thousand flowers bloom' strategy."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2015/05/24/magna-carta-and-libertarian-strategy

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The Hispanic libertarian tradition

Opinion: Hispanic voters and our forgotten libertarian tradition | Fox News Latino - Johnnes Schmidt:

May 19, 2015 - "The prevailing Hispanic alignment to the political left is far from set in stone.  After all, modern day libertarianism was born, in many ways, in the Iberian Peninsula and followed the conquistadors to the New World.  Although some Hispanics might not realize it, a love of liberty is very much a part of our cultural heritage....

"It is no coincidence that the first use of the word 'liberal,' the internationally accepted term for a libertarian, was first used in the 1800s in the context of the Spanish struggle for liberation from Napoleon and his absolutist rule. It is not, in fact, an 'Anglo' word like some scholars would have you believe.

"But the libertarian tradition in Spain begins much earlier than the 19th century; it predates the Enlightenment and even the signing of the Magna Carta.

The Charter of León, issued in 1020 under Alphonso V, for example, granted municipalities judicial and administrative jurisdiction and recognized individual rights.  This check of absolute monarchal power was in place 200 years before the signing of the Magna Carta and was considered a precedent for the United States Constitution by many of the Founders, including John Adams.

"Centuries later, the School of Salamanca would have similar influence and as former Mont Pelerin Society President Leonard Liggio noted in his essay Liberty and Morality: The Neglected Hispanic Tradition, 'modern economics, human rights, and international law were founded in the Iberian universities of the 16th and 17th centuries.'

"Latin America, too, played an important role in the development of libertarian thought. The debates over the humanity and rights of Native Americans (think Bartolomé de las Casas) influenced John Locke and the American Founders.

"Scholars such as Juan de Mariana, Roberto Bellarmine, and Francisco Suárez, both directly and indirectly, helped shape the minds of the fathers of modern day libertarianism. It is for good reason that F.A. Hayek believed that the Spanish Scholastics were the forerunners of the Austrian School of Economics....

"Whether we be first, second or third generation immigrants, we should recognize that we are in the United States because of a lack of political and economic freedom in our native countries. We know that authoritarianism and limited market freedom does not work. It is, without a doubt, why my parents and I left Ecuador in the 1990s.

"It is for this reason that we must be part of the movement to stop the astronomical growth of government that the Bush and Obama years brought to this country. We need to be part of the demographic that elects a politician that stands for limited government and free markets. We are, after all, the original libertarians."

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2015/05/19/opinion-hispanic-voters-and-our-forgotten-libertarian-tradition/
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UK celebrating 800th anniversary of Magna Carta

Magna Carta's 800th anniversary celebration | Toronto Star - Henry Stancu:

January 15, 2015 - "The Magna Carta turns 800 this June and England has invited the world to take part in a series of birthday celebrations throughout most of the year....

"Essentially a peace treaty between England’s King John (1166-1216) and a group of rebellious barons at odds with the unpopular ruler’s fiscal policies, the 'Great Charter' is considered the foundation of modern democracy and the cornerstone of western justice and liberty....

"The Magna Carta made everyone, including royalty, subject to the law. The bulk of the 63 clauses dealt with the series of grievances about ownership of land and taxation raised by irate barons and the English church against King John, but it was the 39th clause that granted all 'free men' the right to fair treatment and justice.

"Of course, only about 10 per cent of England’s population was considered 'free' under the feudal system of the time.

"Translated from Latin, the clause reads: 'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.'

"It wasn’t even considered a prominent clause at the time, but its interpretation by future generations has made it the monumental declaration it is today.

"Those principles would later inspire the drawing up of constitutional documents around the globe, such as the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950.

"The famous decree had a rocky ride for a year as King John, who felt cornered into approving it, got Pope Innocent III to issue a papal bull declaring it null and void, but the king’s son and successor, Henry III, approved a series of revisions over the next decade as the monarchy continued to be at odds with the Church and the rebellious barons until the charter was accepted onto parliament’s roll of statutes in 1297.

"The revisions cut away about a third of the document’s clauses, but the 39th survived intact."

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/life/travel/2015/01/15/magna-cartas-800th-anniversary-celebration.html
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