For our Hayek Speaker Series, please join the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics for a consideration of “The Continuing Relevance of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty” with remarks by eminent legal scholar Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law. Professor Epstein will draw on his most recent book, The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard, 2014), in which he employs close textual reading, historical analysis, and political and economic theory to urge a return to the classical liberal theory of governance that animated the framers' original text, and to the limited government this theory supports.

The lecture will be followed by a reception from 5:30pm-6:30pm. Professor Epstein will also be available to sign copies of his new book.

Questions about this event? Please contact Caitlyn Van Orden at cvanorden@mercatus.gmu.edu or (703) 993-4925.

About Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director of the Classical Liberal Institute at the New York University School of Law. He is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981-1991 and the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001-2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and has been a senior fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences since 1983. Throughout his career he has written numerous articles and books and has taught courses on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects.

About the Hayek Speaker Series

The Hayek Speaker Series promotes Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek’s intellectual legacy by inviting prominent scholars to discuss Hayek’s ideas in light of the pressing matters of our time.

When the Mercatus Center was established at George Mason University in the early 1980s and began its research and graduate education programs here, the first public lecture it arranged was by F. A. Hayek. Hayek’s ideas have remained at the core of the Mercatus research program ever since, particularly his emphasis on methodological individualism, the competitive market process as one of discovery and creativity, and the institutional analysis of mores, law, and governance.

In January 2012, the Mercatus Center established the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, which is part of our graduate education and research activities in our PhD program in economics at George Mason University. While the history of economic thought and methodology is one of our strengths as a research group, our focus is not the intellectual history of economics, and certainly not hagiographic exercises in Hayek studies, but rather political economy as a progressive research program. An understanding of the past shows how where we came from may influence where we are going.

In our first Hayek Speaker Series event last fall, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Hayek receiving the Nobel Prize. The event featured papers from three Nobel laureates and a keynote address by an eminent scholar of Austrian economics, who considered Hayek’s contributions to technical economics and the significance of his Nobel Prize.