Contact info:
(205) 726-2434
Cumberland
School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, AL 35229
My web
page at the law school (includes my bio and email address).
I'm currently developing a set of webpages for my summer class on "Legal
Process," open to incoming first-year students and students in Cumberland's
MCL program. Comments are welcome:
The
Core of American Law on a Single Page
American
Constitutional History in 32 Quotations
British/American
Legal Timeline
A
Hedgehog's Legal Glossary
Roger Clegg and I are co-editors of the Federalist Society's "Conservative and Libertarian Legal Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography" and "The Conservative and Libertarian Pre-Law Reading List".
I'm a guest blogger at Division
of Labour and Point of Law.
Check 'em out!
Please send along comments, suggestions, warnings about broken links,
etc.
Last updated on February 28, 2008.
I don't think we're saying
anything new here. I think we're just saying the same things that
need to be said again and
again, with fierce conviction.
-- Astronaut "Deke" Slayton character in film version
of Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff"
We need education in the
obvious more than investigation of the obscure.
-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To see what is in front of
one's nose needs a constant struggle.
-- George Orwell (1946)
For more quotes, click here.
For "this date in history"
(well, not every date), click here.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Course Links -- On a separate page,
here
II. Indispensable Sites
III. Economic Theory
IV. Economic Analysis of Law
V. Public Choice Theory
VI. The Big Picture: Freedom and Unfreedom
VII. Public Policy Debates
VIII. The American Founding / American History
IX. Legal System / Legal Profession & Legal
Education / Law Reform
X. Philosophy (including Legal Philosophy)
/ History (including Legal History)
XI. Law Search Engines / Legal News & General
Law Sites / Legal Blogs
XII. "Great Books" and Other Literary / General Reference
Desk
XIII. Do-It-Yourself
XIV. Diversions -- Now on a separate page; click here.
I. COURSE LINKS -- On a separate page, here
II. INDISPENSABLE SITES
A. Economics and economic history / freedom and its competitors
Library of Economics
and Liberty (from the generous folks at the Liberty Fund -- a terrific
site!)
Online
Library of Liberty (ditto)
Archive of the History of Economic Thought (McMaster U., Canada)
Liberty Story (edited by Jim Powell, includes a terrific archive of "key documents in the history of liberty")
Economic
Freedom Network (home of "Economic Freedom of the World: Annual
Report")
The
Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years
(by Stephen Moore & Julian Simon, 1999) (PDF)
The First
Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000
(by Caplow, Hicks & Wattenberg, 2001)
Hayek Center (includes the Hayek Scholars Page)
Reason Magazine interview archive (many of the leading figures in the fight for liberty)
Minneapolis Fed's magazine interview archive (ditto)
Online Library of Liberty's "Intellectual Portrait Series" (ditto)
Blogs and podcasts for economics students (my own)
B. Dictionaries, literature guides, and general reference
The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (on the Library of Economics and Liberty, edited by David Henderson)
History of Economic Thought (New School U.)
Encyclopedia of Law and Economics (FindLaw)
Dictionary of the History of Ideas (UVa)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (UT Martin)
WWW Virtual Library (over 250 subjects!)
C. Law
FirstGov ("the U.S. Government's official web portal"-- see esp. the "Reference Center")
Law.com ("first in legal news and information")
Jurist
("legal news and research")
III. ECONOMIC THEORY
I think economics, like philosophy, cannot be taught
to nineteen-year olds. It is an old man's
field. Nineteen-year olds are, most of them,
romantics, capable of memorizing and emoting, but
not capable of thinking coldly in the cost-and-benefit
way. . . . A nineteen-year old has
intimations of immortality, comes directly from
a socialized economy (called a family), and has no
feel on his pulse for those tragedies of adult life
that economists call scarcity and choice.
-- Donald McCloskey (1992)
A1. The Basics
Mankiw's 10 Principles (It doesn't get any more succinct than this.)
Free
Enterprise: The Economics of Cooperation, by Dwight Lee
Common
Sense Economics, by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup & Dwight Lee
These are the two best, short introductions
to economic reasoning I know of. (An earlier version of the latter
is online
here, "adapted for Canadian readers.") A summary of "Ten
Key Elements of Economics" from Common Sense Economics appeared
in the Heritage Foundation's
Insider, Spring 2005 (a PDF file).
Keystone Economic Principles (nine key points, in PDF, from the Powell Center for Economic Literacy)
Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. This classic text was first published in 1946.
The
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (edited by David Henderson)
This is a webbed version
of Fortune Magazine's Encyclopedia of Economics, also edited by Henderson.
Very clearly
written and fully accessible
to the beginner. Thanks to the Liberty Fund, Fortune, David Henderson,
and whoever else
was involved in putting
this on the web. The Encyclopedia is part of a larger website, the
Library
of Economics and Liberty, that is indispensible.
Learning
Economics, by Arnold Kling (webbed intro text by the webmaster of EconLib)
The Nature of Man, by Michael Jensen & William Meckling (PDF)
Economics for the Citizen -- Ten short introductory essays by the prolific Walter Williams of the George Mason economics department.
Economics Internet Library, by Walter Antoniotti (with links to other business sites by the same editor)
The Concise Guide to Economics, by Jim Cox
The Richmond Federal Reserve Bank's quarterly magazine, "Region Focus," regularly carries good, short articles under the headings "Jargon Alert" (economics terms), "Interview" (famous and semi-famous economists), and "Economic History" (mostly of the states in the Bank's region).
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has begun publishing a series of "Policy Primers" designed "to help policy makers, and others involved in the policy process, make more effective decisions by incorporating insights from sound, interdisciplinary research – with an emphasis on the role of "institutions" in promoting prosperity." Particularly recommended: Karol Boudreaux's "The Role of Property Rights as an Institution."
Economic Literacy Project (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)
The Economist magazine's online research tools includes an economics dictionary.
P.J. O'Rourke's C-SPAN interview re his book, Eat the Rich (1999)
For my still-developing list of economics blogs and podcasts, click here.
A2. The Next Level
AmosWeb
("economics with a touch of whimsy")
Virtual
Library -- Economics (a huge site)
Research Papers
in Economics (over 300,000 browsable files -- "the largest bibliographic
database dedicated
to Economics and available
on the Internet")
Social Science Research
Network
Your
Mining Co. Guide to Economics
Joint
Economic Committee, U.S. Congress
Ten Lectures on the Political Economy of the Free Society (2005) by Richard Ebeling (audio)
Price
Theory: An Intermediate Text (2d ed. 1990) by David Friedman (suitable
for college juniors; a terrific resource)
Friedman's C-SPAN interview re his Hidden
Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996)
Introduction
to Economic Analysis: The Open Source Introduction to Microeconomics
by Preston McAfee (PDF) (used in the intro course at Cal Tech)
Essential
Principles of Economics: A Hypermedia Text (2d ed.) by Roger McCain
CyberEconomics:
An Analysis of Unintended Consequences by Robert Schenk (webbed textbook)
Economics
Interactive Tutorials (courtesy of the U. of S. Carolina School of
Public Health)
Economics
in Excel by J. Wilson Mixon, Jr. & Soumaya M. Tohamy
Managerial
Economics by Richard Stanford (webbed textbook)
Price
Theory, a nice website for Steven Landsburg's intermediate textbook
Tutor2uEconomics
(U.K. college entrance materials)
Russell Roberts's books, The Choice
and The Invisible Heart, are described
and previewed here.
Blogs and podcasts for economics students (my own)
Radio
Economics (podcasts of interviews with leading economists)
Economics
at the Idea Channel (links and videos of big name economists)
Two cool economics columns appear regularly on Slate.com -- Steven Landsburg's "Everyday Economics" and Tim Harford's "The Undercover Economist".
The
Economists' Voice is timely and well worth a look, even if pretentiously
titled
Econ
Journal Watch, "a triannual peer-reviewed journal for scholarly commentary
on academic economics"
What
Do Economists Contribute? (by Dan
Klein, 1999) (PDF)
Marginal
Revolution blog, "small steps toward a much better world"
Cafe
Hayek blog, "where orders emerge" (Russell Roberts (see above) and
Don Boudreaux)
B. Economic History / History of Economics
Library
of Economics and Liberty (courtesy of the Liberty Fund -- a terrific
site!)
Online
Library of Liberty (ditto)
History
of Economic Thought
Archive
for the History of Economic Thought (McMaster U., Canada)
Economic History
includes an Encyclopedia of Business
& Economic History and a great
links page.
The History
of Economics site
Adam
Smith Lives! Sandra Peart's history of economic thought blog, with
links to related sites and blogs
My links page on the Scottish Enlightenment
is here.
Short
biographies of free-market theorists (from the Dallas Fed's "Economic
Insights" publication)
Great
economists and their times (from the San Francisco Fed)
Dead
Economists Society
Essay
on the history of Nobel prize in economics, by chair of selection committee
Article
on Nobel prize in economics (from Minneapolis Fed, 1999)
Adam Smith, THE
WEALTH OF NATIONS and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (searchable)
Adam
Smith Institute (UK)
Adam
Smith -- A Primer, by Eamonn Butler (IEA, 2007)
Alan Macfarlane, Adam
Smith and the Making of the Modern World (2000) (PDF file)
from Macfarlane's 2000 book, The
Riddle of the Modern World
Economics
and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith by Sam Fleischacker
(2004)
The
Relevance of Adam Smith by Robert Hetzel (1976)
Adam
Smith, the sensible philosopher by David Frum (1996)
Alan Greenspan, "Adam
Smith Memorial Lecture" (2005)
Another address
by Chairman Greenspan in the Smithian vein (2004)
Adam
Smith "interview" (1994)
Adam Smith and all that, by John Creedy (2002) (comic relief in PDF)
Israel Kirzner, The Economic Point of View: An Essay in the History of Economic Thought (1960, 1976)
A
History of Economic Thought, by William J. Barber (webbed textbook,
1967)
A
History of Economic Analysis, by Roger Backhouse (webbed textbook,
1985)
Classics
in Economics (from Smith, Menger, Bastiat, Hayek, Mises)
Downloadable history
of economic thought books, 1588-1999 (McMaster U.)
The
Secret History of the Dismal Science, by David Levy & Sandra Peart
(2001),
and later installments
here.
Wealth
of Notions, from the U. of Chicago Alumni magazine, about Chicago Nobelists
(2001)
Arnold
Harberger interview (1999)
George
Stigler interview (1989)
Milton
Friedman interview (2000)
Becker
Center on Chicago Price Theory
Kenneth Arrow on Cowles in the History of Economic Thought (1983)
Philosophy of economics links (from EpistemeLinks)
Business
History (large links site)
Incomplete Guide to the Political Economy
of the 20th Century (Independent Institute)
Commanding
Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (site for the 1998 PBS mini-series)
Ancient
Economies
Oxford U. teaching materials in economic
history
Keith Poole's economic
history course pages (scroll down to U. of Houston and Carnegie-Mellon)
John Munro's European
economic history course pages (U. of Toronto)
Best of the Web has a nice page of economic
history links.
C. International Economics / Free Trade
The
Candlemakers' Petition, by Frederic Bastiat
The
Case for Free Trade, by Milton & Rose Friedman
The
Assault on Free Trade, by Dennis Avery
The
Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, by Russell Roberts
(excerpts)
summary
of Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade, by Irwin
Cato
Center for Trade Policy Studies (its founder, Brink
Lindsey, wrote the excellent "Against the Dead Hand")
The
Fruits of Free Trade (Dallas Fed 2002 annual report)
Jagdish
Bhagwati's home page (Columbia U. international trade guru)
International
Economics Study Center (textbook & more from Geo Wash U prof; free
registration)
CIA Handbook of International Economic Statistics
(1998)
D. Numbers
Resources
for Economists on the Internet, courtesy of the American Economic Association
FedStats.gov,
"statistics from more than 100 agencies"
Economic
Reports of the President, 1995-2006 (Executive Office of the President)
Statistical
Resources on the Web (U. of Michigan; a great site!)
National Bureau
of Economic Research (NBER)
Economic
Time Series Page
Measuring
Worth (successor to How Much Is That?)
Statistics on the Web
SurfStat.australia
(on-line statistics text)
The
Web Center for Social Research Methods (Cornell)
Institute
for Quantitative Social Science (Harvard)
The
Chance Project (Dartmouth)
Statistical
Assessment Service, critiques media use of statistics
WebMath
(large site, ranging from help for grade schoolers doing their homework,
on up)
John Allen Paulos's home
page (the author of Innumeracy, and A Mathematician Plays
the Stock Market)
Andrew Gelman's statistics
blog
see also Sykes, "An Introduction to Regression
Analysis" in section IV, below
E. Austrian Economics
Ludwig
von Mises Institute, including --
An introduction
to Austrian economics; an Austrian economics study
guide; several Austrian
and libertarian journals, a huge library of webbed texts, including
Mises's landmark treatise, Human
Action and a blog.
Also on the site is a PDF version of Gene Callahan's book, Economics
for Real People: An Introudction to the Austrian School (2d ed. 2004).
Society
for the Development of Austrian Economics
Peter
Boettke's homepage
Hayek
Scholars Page -- includes the Presto
Pundit blog
Hayek
Links -- just what it sounds like
Transcript
of PBS program, Friedrich Hayek, "Away from Serfdom" (Sept. 1999)
The condensed version of The
Road to Serfdom (1945) from the April 1945 issue of Reader's Digest
Two
of Hayek's most influential articles (the first two listed, as you
scroll down)
Hayek
interview (conducted in 1977, reprinted in July 1992 issue of Reason)
1974
Nobel Prize in economics to Hayek
Hayek
for the 21st Century (interview of Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell, Jan.
2005 Reason)
C-SPAN interviews of
Alan Ebenstein re his biography
of Hayek (2001)
Milton Friedman re his
Introduction
to the 50th anniversary edition of The Road to Serfdom (1994)
No
Third Way: Hayek and the Recovery of Freedom by Gregg & Kasper
(1999)
Hayek
and the Law -- 14 articles in the inaugural issue of the NYU Journal
of Law & Liberty (2005), PDF files
Cato Journal symposium on The
Legacy of Mises and Hayek (1999)
Cafe
Hayek blog
The
Austrian Economists blog
Knowledge
Problem blog
Catallarchy
blog, an Austrian blog edited by non-PhD enthusiasts
F. Game Theory / Experimental Economics
Game
Theory: An Introductory Sketch by Roger McCain
Game
Theory & Experimental Economics Page by Al Roth
Choice Models and Experimental Economics by
Roger Tucker; under revision
David Levine's
game theory page (UCLA)
GameTheory.net
Prisoners' Dilemma page (constitution.org)
On-line
prisoners' dilemma simulation
More
games to play (MIT)
Robert
Axelrod's Complexity of Cooperation Web Site (U. of Michigan)
Charles
Holt's web page on teaching through experimental economics (U.Va.)
Barry
Nalebuff's Coopetition Interactive site (Yale)
Economic
Science Laboratory (University of Arizona)
Interdisciplinary
Center for Economic Science (George Mason)
Laboratory
for Experimental Economics & Political Science (Cal Tech)
Center
on Social & Economic Dynamics (Brookings Institution)
Iowa
Electronic Markets
Washington
Stock Exchange ("a virtual stock market based on the future outcomes
of US political elections and events" due to launch in late 2006)
Classroom
Expernomics (experiments for classroom use)
Experiments
with Economic Principles (by Theodore Bergstrom & John Miller)
Seeing
Around Corners, a book by Jonathan Rauch "about what the study of artificial
societies has to tell us about the real world" and an interview
of Rauch are available online only to Atlantic subscribers, unfortunately.
See also Picker, "An Introduction to Game
Theory and the Law," and Picker, "Simple Games in a Complex World," in
Section IV, below
1994
Nobel Prize in economics to J. Harsanyi, J. Nash & R. Selten
2002
Nobel Prize in economics to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith
interviews
of Smith, 2002
and 2003
2005
Nobel Prize in economics to Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann
2005 interviews
of Schelling by the Financial
Times and the Richmond
Fed
IV. ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW
The same persons who cry down Logic will generally
warn you against Political Economy. It is
unfeeling, they will tell you. It recognises
unpleasant facts. For my part, the most unfeeling thing
I know of is the law of gravitation: it breaks the
neck of the best and most amiable person without
scruple, if he forgets for a single moment to give
heed to it. The winds and waves too are very
unfeeling. Would you advise those who go to
sea to deny then winds and waves -- or to make
use of them, and find the means of guarding against
their dangers? My advice to you is to study
the great writers on Political Economy, and hold
firmly by whatever in them you find true; and
depend on it that if you are not selfish or hard-hearted
already, Political Economy will not make
you so.
-- John Stuart Mill (1867)
Federalist
Society bibliography (scroll down to law & economics)
FindLaw
Law & Economics page (including the Encyclopedia
of Law & Economics)
Jurist
subject guide to law & economics
Law's
Order: What Economics Has to Do With Law and Why It Matters, David
Friedman's fine intro textbook. Check out the rest of his homepage.
Cento Veljanovski, The
Economics of Law (2d ed. 2006), a fine, downloadable short text; thanks
to IEA.
A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell,
Economic
Analysis of Law (2005), a brief digest of the core of the field, to
be published in the second edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.
Lewis Kornhauser, The
Economic Analysis of Law (2006), an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy by a major figure in the field.
Bruce
Benson's home page (including his dictionary entry for "law and
economics")
Cooter
& Ulen's Law & Economics (4th ed. 2004), a solid college textbook
Lawandeconomics
blog
George
Mason U. law & economics program
Harvard
Law School's Olin Center for Law, Economics & Business working
papers archive includes
dozens of papers
of interest in PDF format, including
# 340. Steven Shavell, "Law versus Morality as Regulators of Conduct"
(Nov. 2001)
# 342. Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, "Moral Rules and Moral
Sentiments: Toward a
Theory of an Optimal Moral System" (Nov. 2001)
# 277. Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, "Principles of Fairness
versus Human Welfare:
On the Evaluation of Legal Policy" (February 2000)
# 283. Steven Shavell, "Economic Analysis of Law" (June 2000) --
a survey article for
the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
(2001)
U.
of Chicago Law School, Olin Program in Law & Economics hosts a
great links page and working papers, including
#92. Eric Posner, "Agency Models in Law & Economics" (January
2000)
#53. Richard Posner, "Values and Consequences: An Introduction to
Economic
Analysis of Law" (March 1998)
#49. Richard Epstein, "Contract Law Through the Lens of Laissez-Faire"
#38. Richard Epstein, "Transaction Costs and Property Rights -- Or,
Do Good Fences
Make Good Neighbors?"
#33. Richard Craswell, "Freedom of Contract" (August 1995)
#22. Randal Picker, "An Introduction to Game Theory and the Law"
(June 1994) (see also materials on game theory in Section II.F, above)
#20. Alan Sykes, "An Introduction to Regression Analysis" (October
1993) (see also materials on statistics in II.D)
U. of Chicago Graduate School of Business "Selected
Papers" and "Capital
Ideas" websites offer PDF versions of classic articles by Chicago economists
on a number of topics, including
# 61 Sam Peltzman, Deregulation: The Expected and the
Unexpected
# 56 Eugene Fama, The Disciplining of Corporate Managers
# 50 Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler
on Adam Smith
# 45 Milton Friedman, Free Markets for Free Men
# 39 George Stigler, Modern Man and His Corporation
# 32 Yale Brozen, Competition, Efficiency and Antitrust
# 20 Lorie on the stock market
# 16 Eugene Fama on the stock market
# 3, 7, 13, 58 papers by George Stigler
Encyclopedia
of Law and Economics entries for
The Coase Theorem (#730, Medema)
Transaction Costs (#740, Allen)
see also "Public Choice, Constitutional Pol
Economy, and Law & Econ," in Section V, below
In
Defense of the Economic Analysis of Regulation, by Robert Hahn (AEI,
2004) -- for PDF file click
here
AEI-Brookings
Joint Center for Regulatory Studies
More on regulation and administrative law in section
D of my course
links page
Richard
Epstein's homepage.
The full text of his 2005 book, Free
Markets Under Seige, is available online courtesy of the Hoover Institution.
There are a number of his writings on the website of the New
Zealand Business Roundtable (search on "Epstein").
His book, Principles for a Free Society, is summarized in his 1998
speech at AEI by the same title.
See also his Reason magazine interview, in section VI, below.
Richard
Posner's homepage. He was interviewed by Reason
magazine in April 2001, and appeared on C-SPAN to discuss his book,
Public
Intellectuals, in 2002. Also in 2002, Posner allowed a week's
worth of his diary entries to be published on Slate; click
here for the Friday installment, which includes links to the other
4 days of that week.
Project
Posner is a searchable database of Posner's judicial opinions, stretching
back to 1981. A great resource!
In 2007 both the University
of Chicago Law Review and the Harvard
Law Review published special issues celebrating Posner's 25th anniversary
on the beach, with many of the authors focusing on a single Posner opinion
each.
Ronald
Coase interview (Reason, January 1997)
recent
article about Coase (Nov. 2004)
the Ronald Coase Institute
the Contracting and Organizations Research
Institute, work in the Coasian vein, at the U. of Missouri
Autobiographical
essay by Coase (1991)
1991
Nobel Prize in economics to Ronald Coase
Coase
lecture at U. of Chicago, April 2003 (Quick Time)
1992
Nobel Prize in economics to Gary Becker
interview
of Becker (June 2002)
The
Becker-Posner Blog (yep!)
V. PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY
[P]olitics itself is a mass
of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. . . . Political
language . . . is designed
to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to
give an appearance of solidity
to pure wind.
-- George Orwell (1950)
The U.S. government is a
sort of permanent frat pledge to every special interest in the
nation -- willing to undertake
any task no matter how absurd or useless. . . . Politics
would not exist if it weren't
for special interests. If the effect of government were always
the same on everyone and
if no one stood to lose or gain anything from government
except what his fellows
did, there would be little need for debate and no need for
coalitions, parties or intrigue.
. . . The whole idea of our government is this: If enough
people get together and
act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1991)
Federalist
Society bibliography (scroll down to public choice)
Understanding
Democracy: An Introduction to Public Choice, by Patrick Gunning (check
out the "downloadable
samples" -- even though the full text is no longer available, alas)
Introduction
to Public Choice Theory, by Leon Felkins, including "A
Rational Life: The Peculiar Consequences of Individuals Living in Groups"
Encyclopedia
of L&E entries for
Public Choice, Constitutional Political Economy, and Law & Econ (#610,
Van den Hauwe)
Public Goods and Club Goods (#750, McNutt)
U. of Chicago Olin
Program in Law & Economics Working Papers includes numerous papers
of interest in PDF, including:
#60. John R. Lott, Jr., "How Dramatically Did Women's Suffrage Change
the Size and
Scope of Government?" (September 1998)
#54. Denise DiPasquale & Edward L. Glaeser, "Incentives and Social
Capital: Are
Homeowners Better Citizens?" (April 1998)
#52. John R. Lott, Jr., "A Simple Explanation for Why Campaign Expenditures
Are
Increasing: The Government is Getting Bigger" (February 1998)
#34. J. Mark Ramseyer, "Public Choice" (November 1994)
Public
choice resource page from Constitution.org
"Yes, Minister" was a very popular British
TV show that satirized politics, often along lines consistent with public
choice theory. For a good fansite, check out The
Yes (Prime) Minister Files.
Charles Adam's C-SPAN interview re his For
Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (1993)
Ilya Somin, When
Ignorance Isn't Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy
(Cato, 2004, pdf)
Analyzing
Politics: Rationality, Behavior & Institutions, to accompany the
Shepsle & Bonchek textbook
Open
Secrets (campaign contributions database)
Farm
Subsidy Database, from the Environmental Working Group
Vote View,
info on Congressional voting patterns from Keith Poole of UC San Diego
Mathew
McCubbins' home page, also at UC San Diego
Randall
Holcombe's homepage (Florida State U.)
Kenneth
Arrow interview (1995)
Politics,
Philosophy & Economics (journal)
Bruno
Frey's public choice research group at U.of Zurich (in English)
Center
for Study of Public Choice (George Mason U.)
Public
Choice Society
Short
article on tax legislation as opportunity for extortion
Gordon
Tullock homepage (George Mason U.)
Papers on Gordon
Tullock's career on his 80th birthday
Tullock interview
(2003)
Tullock on
privilege seeking
James Buchanan interviews from 1995
and 2004
(pdf)
Buchanan, What
Is Public Choice Theory? (2003)
Buchanan, Saving
the Soul of Classical Liberalism (2000)
James Buchanan
Center for Political Economy, George Mason U.
dozens
of papers in honor of Buchanan
1986
Nobel Prize in economics to James Buchanan
The
Collected Works of James Buchanan, courtesy of the Liberty Fund.
A fantastic online resource.
VI. THE BIG PICTURE: FREEDOM AND UNFREEDOM
The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths,
and putting themselves under
government, is the preservation of their property.
-- John Locke (1690)
The Dane never showed up but they had the "seminar"
anyway, under some shade trees
in a place called the French Park. Jay Bomarr
opened it with his famous speech, "Come
Dream Along with Me." I had heard it myself,
at Ole Miss of all places, back in the days
when Jay was drawing big crowds. It was a
dream of blood and smashed faces, with a
lot of talk about "the people," whose historic duty
it was to become a nameless herd and
submit their lives to the absolute control of a
small pack of wily and vicious intellectuals.
-- Charles Portis, "The Dog of the
South" (1979)
Richard
Epstein interview (April 1995 issue of Reason)
Richard Pipes, "Life, Liberty, Property" (1999)
Richard Pipes, Property
and Freedom: The Inseparable Connection (2004)
Survey:
Capitalism and Democracy, from The Economist, June 26, 2003, the magazine's
160th birthday.
P.J. O'Rourke, The
Liberty Manifesto (1993)
P.J. O'Rourke, Closing
the Wealth Gap (1997)
P.J. O'Rourke, "A Message to Redistributionists"
(1997)
P.J.
O'Rourke and Robert Bork reminisce about the '60s (1997)
Paul Heyne, Moral
Misunderstanding and the Justification of Markets (1998)
Tibor
Machan's recent papers (philosopher concerned with economic rights/liberties)
Bruce Bartlett, How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome (1994)
Sean Gabb, How
English Liberalism was Created by Accident and Custom, and then Destroyed
by Liberals
Frederic Bastiat
site
Frederic Bastiat, The
Law (1850)
Frederic Bastiat, The
Law (1850)
The
Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics, by
West & Schambra (2007)
The
Declaration of Independence in American, by H.L. Mencken (1918)
The New
Deal Network, from the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
Constitution
for the New Deal, by H.L. Mencken (1937)
The
Revolution Was, by Garet Garrett (1938)
Dennis Hutcheson C-SPAN interview re his book,
The
Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk
in FDR's Washington (2002)
A
Constitutional History of the United States, by Andrew C. McLaughlin
(1936 (before the deluge))
Liberty
at Risk: The Least Every Citizen Should Know About Capitalism and its Enemies,
by Dean Worcester, late professor of economics at the U. of Washington,
in PDF
Liberty
Story (edited by Jim Powell, includes a terrific archive of "key documents
in the history of liberty")
American
Universities and the Betrayal of Liberty (2006) by Alan Charles Kors
(audio)
David Horowitz's Discover
the Network: "a guide to the political left"
Reason
Magazine interview archive (many of the leading figures in the fight
for liberty)
Minneapolis
Fed's magazine interview archive (ditto)
Online Library of Liberty's "Intellectual
Portrait Series" (ditto)
Coercion
v. consent: How to think about liberty (A Reason magazine (March '04)
debate featuring Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, David Friedman, and James
Pinkerton)
Gertrude Himmelfarb's C-SPAN interview re her book,
The
De-Moralization of Society (1995)
Samuel
Brittan, Financial Times columnist
Economic
Freedom of the World, 2007 Annual Report (Gwartney & Lawson)
Economic
Freedom Network
2007
Index of Economic Freedom (excerpts) (Miles, Feulner & O'Grady)
Gapminder World
(cool graphics)
The free
enterprise projects of The John Templeton Foundation
Atlas Economic
Research Foundation
Democracy
Project blog
Peter Bauer was an eloquent free-market economist
whose career has been devoted to the field of developmental economics.
In 2002, the Cato Institute awarded him its first "Milton Friedman Prize
for Advancing Liberty." See Cato's
tribute to Bauer.
Mancur
Olson was an economist at the University of Maryland who died suddenly
in 1998. His later work was devoted to questions of economic development
-- in particular the importance of legal and other institutions to economic
growth and human welfare. A number of his writings are available
online by searching on "mancur"
here.
Julian
Simon also taught at Maryland at the time of his death, also untimely
and also in 1998. He wrote about population growth, immigration,
and other topics in an optimisitcally iconoclastic mode. His colleague
Stephen Moore's tribute
is here. See also their lengthy article, The
Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years
(1999) (PDF)
Along the same lines as Simon's work, see Caplow,
Hicks & Wattenberg, The First
Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000
(2001). The website for the companion PBS program is here.
Also in this vein, see the very readable feature
stories in the annual
reports of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Avner Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge U. Press. and on his website.
The
Birth of Plenty (2004), by William Bernstein (site includes exerpts
from the preface and introduction, and the whole of chapter one)
Angus Maddison's
website
Maddison's 2005 book, Growth
& Interaction in the World Economy: The Roots of Modernity (AEI,
2005)
Groningen Growth
& Development Centre (Netherlands)
The World
Economy (the OECD)
The
Industrial Revolution: Past and Future by Robert Lucas, for the Minneapolis
Fed, May 2004
Forbes Magazine's 85th
Anniversary Issue is chock-full of interesting business history items.
Jerry L. Jordan, Sources
of Prosperity (1998)
Dynamist.com,the
work of Virginia Postrel, current NY Times economics columnist and former
editor of Reason magazine, includes her
blog. See also her C-SPAN interview re her book, The
Future and Its Enemies (1999).
See the website for the PBS program "Commanding
Heights: The Battle for the World Economy" in Section III.B., above
Institute
for Humane Studies (George Mason U.)
International
Society for Individual Liberty, the successor to Free-Market.net
Henry
Hazlitt Foundation (archives only)
Intellectual
Conservative
Economist Magazine's Survey
of the 20th Century (9-11-1999)
John Stossel (ABC News) program, "Is America
#1?: The Success & Failure of Societies" (transcript, 9-19-99)
15
lectures on democracy at Yale University, 2001 (text and audio)
Dave Barry interview
(1994)
World Development, Inc.
Publications and working papers of
Harvard
economists Robert Barro, Edward Glaeser, and Andrei Shleifer are available
here.
Dartmouth
economist Raphael LaPorta available here.
MIT economist
Daron Acemoglu available here.
Hernando DeSoto interviews 2001
and 1999
DeSoto, Citadels
of Dead Capital (May 2001)
The Legacy of Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose (papers from a conference at the Dallas Fed, 2003)
William
F. Buckley archive (a huge site, hosted by Hillsdale College)
Firing
Line Television Program Collection (hosted by the Hoover Institution)
Thomas Sowell's
homepage
Thomas Sowell interviews
1999
and 2001
Eric
Voegelin Institute at LSU (20th c. political philosopher)
Eric
Voegelin study page
Michael
Oakeshott Association (UK) (another 20th c. political philosopher)
Isaiah
Berlin Virtual Library (UK) (20th c. philosopher)
The
Churchill Centre (Washington, DC)
Churchill
Archives Centre (U. of Cambridge)
Robert Conquest C-SPAN interview re his Reflections
on a Ravaged Century (1999)
Robert Conquest, Freedom,
Terror, and Falsehoods: Lessons from the 20th Century (2000)
Leszek
Kolakowski and the anatomy of totalitarianism, by Roger Kimball (2005)
Vaclav
Havel (former president, Czech Republic) home page. Havel's May
2005 address at the Library of Congress on human rights, "with particular
attention to countries such as Cuba, China, Belarus and Burma" (video
here). Details of his seven-week visit to Columbia U. in the
fall of 2006 are available here.
House
of Terror Museum, Budapest
Museum
of Communism (Bryan Caplan, George Mason U.)
The
Cambridge Spies (Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean)
NSA
museum web site, including discussion of the Venona
documents
Freedom,
Democide, War (R.J. Rummel, U. of Hawaii)
Professor Rummel's blog
His 2005 essay on "The
Red Plague"
Is
the Spectre of Communism Still Haunting the World? (2006) by Richard
Ebeling (audio) or text
George
Orwell Homepage
Orwell's Revenge:
The 1984 Palimpsest, by Peter Huber
Anne Applebaum's website
Her C-SPAN interview re
her book Gulag:
A History (2003)
Revelations
from the Russian Archives (Library of Congress, 1992)
Malcolm
Muggeridge: The Iconoclast links page
Excerpts from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
1978
Harvard address, with 1998 commentary
Pope John Paul II's encyclicals on "The
Hundredth Year" (capitalism vs. socialism) and
"Faith
and Reason" (epistemology, modernism, etc.)
Margaret
Thatcher Foundation, "offers free access to the full texts of thousands
of documents relating to the politics of the last quarter of a century"
Margaret
Thatcher symposium, with a nice links page (Chapman U., 2002)
Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library (NARA and U. of Texas)
Ronald
Reagan Presidential Foundation
James C. Bennett, The
Anglosphere Challenge (why the English-speaking nations will lead the
way in the 21st century")
The
Anglosphere Institute
Albion's
Seedlings (blog)
C-SPAN interviews of
Paul Hollander re his Anti-Americanism
(1992)
David Gelernter re his Drawing
Life: Surviving the Unabomber (1997)
Mona Charen re her Useful
Idiots (2003)
Getting
Rich in America: A Few Easy Rules to Follow, by Richard McKenzie &
Dwight Lee
Guide
to Personal Finance (Malcolm Getz, Vanderbilt U.)
Paul Romer, Economic
Growth, in Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics
and his essay on Economic
Growth for the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia, due out 2007
Romer
interview (requires registration; 1997)
Wired
magazine on Romer's work, 1996
The
Milken Institute
Piercing
the Gloom and Doom, by Herbert London (1999)
John Fonte, Why
There Is a Culture War (2000; it's Tocqueville vs. Gramsci)
Robert Nozick, Why
Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? (1998)
Center for
Media and Public Affairs (Robert Lichter's group)
Dictionary
of Key Terms for a Free and Virtuous Society, from the Acton Institute
In
the Liberal Tradition: A History of Liberty, ditto
Francis
Fukuyama's homepage (Johns Hopkins U.)
UCSB
Center for Evolutionary Psychology (includes "Evolutionary
Psychology: A Primer")
Tom Bethell, Against
Sociobiology (2001)
The
Freeman (monthly, Foundation for Economic Education)
Policy
Review (bi-monthly, Hoover Institution)
Independent
Review (quarterly, Independent Institute)
Freedom's
Nest (quotes page)
1993
Nobel Prize in economics to Robert Vogel and Douglass North
Center
for New Institutional Social Sciences, Washington U. (St. Louis)
VII. PUBLIC POLICY DEBATES
RegInfo.gov
"Where to find Federal Regulatory Information"
FedStats.gov,
"statistics from more than 100 agencies"
A. Timely Sites (including blogs)
Investors
Business Daily editorial page
Wall
Street Journal editorial page
The Journal
editorial board's list
of (and links to) their favorite websites.
Best
of the Web daily from the Journal
Town Hall
Townhall
Columnists
(collection of more than 60 conservative columnists)
The American
Prowler (daily offerings by the people who produce The American
Spectator)
NewsMax.com
Freedom
News Daily
World Net Daily
NewsDirectory.com (links to hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets -- worldwide)
Mark Steyn
James Lileks
(the daily commentary ("The Bleat") is only part of what's on offer here;
don't miss The Institute of Official
Cheer, the Old Ad Archive,
or the Bureau of Corporate Allegory!)
Rush
Limbaugh
Michael
Barone's blog
Victor
Davis Hanson (classical scholar, military historian)
Michael
Novak, "author, philosopher, theologian"
My favorite Washington
Post columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Robert Samuelson, and George
Will.
David
Gelernter
Michael
Kelly archives, 1999-2003
National
Journal
Ben Wattenberg's Think
Tank (PBS program)
Peter Robinson's Uncommon
Knowledge (ditto)
Larry Sabato's Center
for Politics at UVA
OxBlog
follows international relations
Austin
Bay's blog focuses on the war on terror
Daniel
Drezner blogs on and teaches international relations at Tufts U.
David
Warren's "Essays on our Times"
Lee Harris articles archived at Policy
Review and Tech
Central Station
The
American Scene blog promises "an ongoing review of politics and culture"
Hit
and Run is Reason Magazine's blog
Tech
Central Station is always worth a look
Podcasts archive
B. Market-Oriented Thinks Tanks
Citizens'
Guide to Conservative Organizations (from the Heartland Institute)
Policy
Experts: The Insider Guide to Public Policy Experts and Organizations
(from the Heritage Foundation)
"Freedom
Directory" links to "nearly 500 think tanks worldwide" (from the Atlas
Foundation)
American Enterprise
Institute
Events archive
Atlas
Economic Research Foundation
Cato Institute
Blog: Cato at Liberty
Online magazine: Cato Unbound
Podcasts archive
Competitive Enterprise
Institute
Blog: CEI Open Market
Heritage
Foundation
Blog: Heritage Policy
Blog
Blog: The Insider
Events archive
Regulation
Watch (Heritage's "one-stop page for information on regulation in America")
Hoover Institution
Independent
Institute
Especially for state and local issues:
Citizens
for a Sound Economy (includes link to Alabama chapter)
Heartland
Institute
Blog: From the Heartland
Mackiniac
Center (based in Michigan, but includes lots of more general material,
too)
John
Locke Institute (based in North Carolina)
Pope
Center for Higher Education (a fine site)
Faculty
Affiliate Network (every state should have one of these)
Blog: The Locker Room
Alabama
Policy Institute
see also section I.D. of the Course Links
page (especially Regulation.org and Regulation Magazine)
VIII. THE AMERICAN FOUNDING / AMERICAN HISTORY
And you may ask yourself
-- Well . . . How did I get here?
-- David Byrne (Talking Heads), "Once in a Lifetime"
(sometime in the '80s)
The characteristic danger
of great nations, like the Romans and the English, which have a
long history of continuous
creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending
the great institutions that
they have created.
-- Walter Bagehot (18__)
Federalist Society bibliography (scroll down to the founding)
Core
Documents of US Democracy (Gov't Printing Office)
Historical
Documents (Library of Congress)
Our
Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives
The
Interactive Constitution (National Constitution Center, Philadelphia)
A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates
1774-1875 (Library of Congress)
The
Founders' Constitution (a terrific resource, from the U. of Chicago
Press)
The
Founders' Almanac (ditto, from The Heritage Foundation)
Constitutional
Convention and Ratification
of the Constitution (from Teaching
American History at Ashland U.)
Primary
Documents of American History
Avalon
Project (Yale Law School)
Founding
Documents (Emory Law School)
A Chronology
of U.S. Historical Documents (U. of Oklahoma)
Documents
for the Study of American History (U. of Kansas)
Founding.com
(Claremont Institute)
Constitution
Society (includes Cooke edition of The Federalist Papers)
Liberty
Library of Constitutional Classics
A
Constitutional History of the United States, by Andrew C. McLaughlin
(1936 (before the deluge))
Colonial
Origins of American Liberty, by Thomas Woods
Classics
of American Colonial History (Dinsmore Documentation)
James
Madison website (James Madison U.)
The
Center for the Constitution, at Montpelier, Madison's home
The
Papers of George Washington (UVa)
Thomas
Jefferson Digital Archive (UVa)
George
Mason online
C-SPAN interviews of
Bernard Baylyn re his To
Begin the World Anew (2003)
Michael Novak re his On
Two Wings (2002)
Gordon Wood re his The
American Revolution (2002)
Thomas West re his Vindicating
the Founders (1997)
Kent Newmyer re his John
Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (2002)
American
Memory (Library of Congress)
A
Timeline of American Thought (Oklahoma State U.)
American
Political History On-line (Richard Jensen, UIC)
American
Experience (PBS)
Gilder
Lehrman Institute of American History (includes search engine for the
Gilder Lehrman Collection)
American
History HTML Project
De
Tocqueville's Democracy in America (searchable)
Alexis
de Tocqueville page
Harvey Mansfield's
C-SPAN interview re his translation
of Tocqueville (2000)
American
Heritage magazine
HarpWeek:
Harper's Weekly in the 19th century
Making
of America (U. of Michigan site containing thousands of 19th century
journals and books)
Department
of American Studies, UVA (very cool American culture site)
Teaching
American History (from the Ashbrook Center @ Ashbrook U.)
History
Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web (George Mason U.)
Paul Johnson C-SPAN interview re his History
of the American People (1998)
Review
of Johnson's History of the American People, by Hadley Arkes
Gordon Lloyd's excellent
web pages on, inter alia, the American Founding, the French Revolution,
political economy, and the New Deal (links are at the bottom of this page)
IX. LEGAL SYSTEM / LEGAL PROFESSION & LEGAL EDUCATION / LAW REFORM
THE
FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES
RAND Corporation Institute
for Civil Justice
Understanding
the Federal Courts, from the Administrative Office of the US Courts
US Department of Justice's Bureau
of Justice Statistics
C-SPAN's America
and the Courts
From the Encyclopedia
of Law and Economics:
# 9000, General Character
of Rules, by Kaplow
# 9200, Judge Made Law,
by Rubin
# 7100, Judicial Organization
and Administration, by Kornhauser
# 7000, Civil Procedure:
General, by Kobayashi & Parker
The
Oyez Project: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia (Northwestern U.)
On
the Docket: US Supreme Court News (Northwestern U.)
U.S.
Supreme Court (official site)
Clegg & DeBow, Conservative
and Libertarian Pre-Law Reading List (for the Federalist Society)
Clegg & DeBow, Pre-law
prerequisities: A guide to the post-socialist world (Policy Review,
1994)
John McGinnis, Impeachable
Defenses -- Excellent article discussing, among other things,
the dominant ideology among law professors and in the law schools.
Highly recommended !
Jurist:
The Law Professors' Network (good source for legal news)
The Green
Bag ("An Entertaining Journal of Law")
Lawyers,
Gums, and Rummies: Why do we hate lawyers (Walter Olson)
Walter
Olson's homepage (legal reform)
Olson runs 2 blogs on problems in our legal
system and the need for reform: Overlawyered.com
and PointofLaw.com
Trial
Lawyers Inc. ("a report on the lawsuit industry in America")
Association
of Trial Lawyers of America vs. American
Tort Reform Association
see also ATRA's Tracking the Trial Lawyers re campaign contributions
Institute
for Legal Reform of the US Chamber of Commerce offers a good
links page
American Justice Partnership's "legal
reform in the news"
C-SPAN interviews of
Max Boot re his Out
of Order: Arrogance, Corruption, and Incompetence on the Bench (1998)
Dennis Hutchinson
re his The Forgotten
Memoir of John Knox (2002)
American Law Institute(where
Restatements come from)
National
Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (where uniform acts
come from)
X. PHILOSOPHY (INCLUDING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY) / HISTORY (INCLUDING LEGAL HISTORY)
Federalist
Society bibliography (scroll down to jurisprudence)
Dictionary
of Key Terms for a Free and Virtuous Society (Acton Institute)
Classical
Political Theory Web and Modern
Political Theory websites (Western Illinois U.)
Legal
Theory Lexicon -- described by its author, Professor Lawrence Solum
of the U. of Illinois law school, as "basic concepts in legal theory for
first year law students" -- highly recommended. His Legal
Theory blog focuses on legal philosophy.
Jurisprudence:
An Overview (from Cornell's Legal Information Institute)
Philosophy
of law links
Excerpts
from Randy Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law
Oxford U. legal philosophy sites here
and
here
U. of Texas law
and philosophy program
Robert Bork on
the future of the rule of law (First Things, Jan. 2000)
Bork's C-SPAN interview re his Slouching
Towards Gomorrah (1996)
Robert Bork, ed., A
Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values (2005).
Bork's introduction and essays by Lino Graglia, Gary McDowell, Terry Eastland,
David Davenport, and Lee Casey & David Rivkin are downloadable, free,
as PDF files.
Robert George, What
Is Law? A Century of Arguments (First Things, April 2001)
J. Budziszewski, The
Revenge of Conscience (First Things, June/July 1998)
J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart:
The Case for Natural Law reviewed
(First Things, Nov. 1997)
Symposium: The
End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics (First Things,
Nov. 1996)
symposium continued
(First Things, January 1997)
symposium critiqued (Commentary Magazine, Feb. 1997)
Budziszewski, Tne
Future of the End of Democracy (First Things, March 1999)
Steven Smith, The
Constitution in the Cave (First Things, May 2000)
Symposium: The
Supreme Court 2000 (First Things, October 2000)
Steven Smith, Legal
Theories Nobody Believes (First Things, November 2000) (review of 2
books on the Warren Court and one on the Burger Court)
Judge Edith Jones, Contemporary
Threats to the Rule of Law, James Madison Program, Princeton U., 2001
(pdf)
Michael Uhlmann, The
Supreme Court Rules (First Things, October 2003)
Steven Smith, Conciliating
Hatred (First Things, June/July 2004)
Michael Uhlmann, The
Supreme Court Rules: 2004 (First Things, October 2004)
Dictionary
of the History of Ideas (UVa)
Thoemmes
Encylcopedia of the History of Ideas
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (including Philosophy Text Collection)
Meta-Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (search engine for on-line philosophy encyclopedias)
WWW
Virtual Library: Philosophy
Episteme
Links
Hippias
(philosophy search engine)
American
Philosophical Association links pages
Philosophy
Around the Web by Peter King
Sean's
One-Stop Philosophy Shop (click on heading at top left side of the
page)
Plato
and His Dialogues
The
Radical Academy: Philosophy, Politics, and the Human Condition
Philosophy
since the Enlightenment by Roger Jones
Utilitarianism
Resources
Blackwell
Publishers' philosophy page
Wadsworth
Publishers' philosophy page
Routledge
Publishers' philosophy page
The
Philosophers' Magazine
Philosophy
News Service
Philosophy
Now, "a magazine of ideas"
The Edge
Pathways
to Philosophy distance learning programs
Ask
a Philosopher (courtesy of Pathways, just above)
Society
for Philosophical Inquiry, begun by the author of Socrates' Cafe
John
Searle interviewed, defends "free speech, free inquiry, and the Enlightenment"
(Reason, Feb. 2000)
The Conservative Philosopher blog
Philosophy
Talk (Stanford U. audio programs)
Philosophy Talk blog
Philosophy
Bites podcasts (Nigel Warburton)
Podcasts of Warburton's book, Philosophy:
The Classics
Virtual Philosopher blog
List
of 172 of the most common logical fallacies, from the IEM
Stephen's
Guide to the Logical Fallacies, informal logic
The Fallacy
Files, mostly informal logic
Constructing
a Logical Argument, informal logic
Logic Primer, formal logic from Texas A&M
Introduction
to Logic (Oxford U.)
The Critical
Thinking Community is apprently based at Sonoma State U.
Critical
Thinking on the Web links page
The Ism Book: A Field Guide to the Nomenclature of Philosophy
Inside
British History (BBC)
BBC
History TV & Radio Programmes archive
Simon Schama, A
History of Britain (BBC)
British
History resources on Britannia.com
Law
and Society in England 1750-1950 by Cornish & Clark (1989).
A landmark, in PDF.
War
of the Roses
British
Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate 1638-60
Glorious
Revolution of 1688
Eighteenth
Century Resources (Rutgers)
Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (George
Mason U.)
Edmund Burke, Reflections
on the Revolution in France (1790)
The
Legal History Project of Peter Hansen
Juridicus
(Hansen's blog)
Legal
History Blog (Mary Dudziak, USC)
Legal
History Research Guide at U. of Chicago Library
Legal
History Links page at U. of Pittsburgh law library
Guide
to Legal History Resources on the Web from the U. of Texas law library
British
Legal History on the web from the U. of Cambridge Squire law library
English
Legal History Materials (Robert Palmer, U. of Houston)
Jurist
subject guide to legal history
American
Society for Legal History
Western
Legal Tradition (interesting undergraduate course page at American
U., from ancient civilizations to Hobbes & Locke)
Ancient
Legal Texts
Roman
Law Resources (U. of Aberdeen)
Netserf:
Medieval Law (contains texts by famous legal historians F.W. Maitland
(under "Common") and H.S. Maine (under "Roman")
Medieval
Legal History
The Internet
History Sourcebook Project offers extensive material on ancient
, medieval , and
modern
history. You could probably re-teach yourself the basics of "Western
Civ" with this site. For an on-line Western Civ course taught by
the same guy who runs the Sourcebook Project, go to The
Shaping of the Modern World . Other large Western Civ web sites
include:
Exploring
Ancient World Cultures (U. of Evansville)
World
Cultures: An Internet Classroom and Anthology (Washington State
U.)
Internet
Classics Archive (MIT)
Perseus
Project (Tufts)
Electronic
Resources for Classicists (UC Irvine)
The Labyrinth:
Resources for Medieval Studies (Georgetown U.)
Online Reference Book
for Medieval Studies (CUNY College of Staten Island)
Another
Sort of Learning, James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown Dept.of Government
Roman Catholic
Political Philosophy (James Schall)
Scholars'
Guide to the WWW, by Richard Jensen, offers many history links among
other subjects
Hanover
Historical Texts Project
Best
of History Web Sites
20th
Century History Books, a bookseller
Directory
of History Journals
The
St. Thomas More Web Site
Robert Bork, Thomas
More for Our Season (First Things, June/July 1999)
Sir Edward Coke
Lord Mansfield
William Blackstone
his "Commentaries
on the Laws of England" (1765-69)
another
version of the Commentaries
Jeremy
Bentham
The Constitution
Unit at University College London studies changes to the British constitution.
Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr.