The moral status of economic liberty is a critical point of contention within liberal theory. Classical liberals, including Tomasi, suggest that economic activity is fundamental for exercising personal autonomy and its protection to be to the overall benefit of all persons. By contrast,...

In the summer of 2019, The Independent Review published a symposium on classical liberalism and social justice. We give an overview and commentary on the symposium papers. Rather than adopting the term social justice, we recommend returning to the three senses of justice maintained by Adam Smith...

The degree to which Adam Smith's view, that the opulence of any nation at the macro level was the result of, and was determined by, large numbers of “sober” people practicing the Virtue of Prudence, which Smith demonstrated in Part VI of the Sixth Edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments in...

A neglected aspect of regional trade agreements (RTAs) is their protectionist potential. In times of a stagnating World Trade Organization (WTO), growing economic nationalism and skepticism about the merits of free trade and trade agreements, the paper examines to what extent recently signed...

Regarding economic freedom, research shows that although it has its negative effects, especially in a shorter term, e.g., the phase of increasing inequality, overall trends are indicative that countries with higher levels of economic freedom have not only higher gross domestic product per capita...

The present 77 page document is my set of notes used in a five-part reading group on Larry Siedentop's great book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. The document contains a link to the set of videos online

On regular issues of policy reform—presupposing a stable integrated polity— Hume, Smith, and Burke were liberal in the original political meaning of “liberal.” Thus, on policy reform, although they accorded the status quo a certain presumption (as any reasonable person must), the more...

In studying the development of western freedoms, perhaps no subject is more worthy of discussion than classical liberalism, which the late historian Ralph Raico wrote was “the signature political philosophy of Western Civilization.” Raico defined classical liberalism as “the ideology...