Articles

Several years ago, an author defended looting in an NPR interview by arguing, "It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people." That justification stayed with me. How many Americans have forgotten that private property is how human beings implement their freedom in the world? Liberty is not just the freedom to think but also to do – ...

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will not hear our Thomas Jefferson High School case, a fight to determine whether public school students should be treated as individuals—on merit—or as members of racial groups. This is disappointing news for Pacific Legal Foundation and our clients, the Coalition for TJ: a group of par ...

Bloomberg just published a feature on Pacific Legal Foundation—quoting me—that has me split. On one hand, I love that Bloomberg is talking about "PLF's mastery of the long game." But the article got only half the story right.  The article is a dual-profile of PLF and Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group. Both PLF and ...

I'm going to remember today for a long time.   This morning—at around 7 a.m. where I am in California—the Supreme Court announced unanimous decisions in two Pacific Legal Foundation cases.   Both are stunning victories.   In Sackett v. EPA, which PLF senior attorney Damien Schiff argued on the first day of the term in October, the C ...

It was 50 years ago today, on March 5, 1973, that Pacific Legal Foundation was born. Afterward newspaper Human Events said the date "may go down in history as the day the worm began to turn."  For those of us who came of age with a vibrant, growing liberty movement, it's hard to remember how different things were in 1973. There was no Cato Inst ...

 This article is featured in the fall edition of our quarterly magazine Sword&Scales. To read the full edition visit: swordandscales.pacificlegal.org ~~~ When I first began in the libertarian public-interest legal movement—17 years ago!—my work focused exclusively on property rights. In fact, it was my interest in that issue that led me ...

As the COVID-19 pandemic gradually recedes from the highs we saw in 2020, we should carefully reflect on what the past 15 months of a public health emergency have taught us. As a longtime advocate for individual liberty and limited government, here's the principal lesson I take from our pandemic experience: The separation of governmental powers mus ...

This letter to the editor is in response to Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times and was originally published on March 16, 2021.  What Paul Krugman leaves unsaid is who actually gets to choose given our "limited ability to process information." Answer: the well-educated, well-positioned elites like Mr. Krugman himself. This conceit h ...

After the chaos of 2020 — a year marked by a deadly global pandemic, a painful economic contraction, widespread civil unrest, and a bitterly contested presidential election — it's safe to say Americans are deeply concerned about the state of our nation. The numbers tell the story. According to the RealClear Politics polling average, more tha ...