Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett argued for the right to medical marijuana for personal use before the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), and he garnered three votes where most predicted no more than one. He was also part of the legal team in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) that tried to end Obamacare’s individual insurance purchase mandate. While Barnett’s side lost, the case helped revive the notion that the enumerated powers construct in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution could still be meaningfully called on.
Barnett started off in the 1970s, though, as just part of a tiny gang of radical libertarians striving to influence academia and political culture, a devotee of the anarcho-capitalist firebrand Murray Rothbard. Barnett’s intellectual education was shaped by movement organizations such as the Center for Libertarian Studies and the Institute for Humane Studies.
In his memoir, A Life for…
