Most people would be hard‐pressed to define the American Dream without some reference to economic freedom. From Benjamin Franklin (who had dozens of inventions, including bifocals and a flexible catheter), to self‐made man Frederick Douglass, to entrepreneur and inventor Joy Mangano (who created the Miracle Mop), Americans believe that with a good idea and enough hard work, anyone can enjoy economic success—no matter the circumstances of their birth.
They’d be surprised, then, to learn that courts do very little to protect the right to earn a living. By all accounts, that precious right was intended to be a centerpiece of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet federal courts have all but written it out of the Constitution. Despite vast scholarship by heavy hitters such as Bernard Siegan and Randy Barnett and decades of public-interest litigation with sympathetic facts, the Supreme Court refuses to consider the right to earn a living a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. If we want the judiciary to protect economic freedom, it’s time to try something new.
Join us as scholars, researchers, and litigators discuss underexplored constitutional provisions and strategies for reviving protection for economic freedom.
