At least one person, a law professor in Tennessee thinks there’s a hidden libertarian message in the Harry Potter series:

KNOXVILLE — “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series, will be published on July 21, and University of Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton will be standing in line to get it.

A big fan of Harry Potter, Barton has become a true student of the series, and he says he’s found some politically charged lessons written between the lines.

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Barton wrote a paper entitled “Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy” that was published in the Michigan Law Review in May 2006. The paper is being reprinted as a chapter in the book, “Harry Potter and the Law” (Carolina Press), due out this summer. He also has lectured on the topic at a “Power of Stories” seminar in Gloucester, England, in July 2005.

In “Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy,” Barton details the political messages he’s discovered in the Potter books:

“What would you think of a government that engaged in this list of tyrannical activities: tortured children for lying; designed its prison specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; placed citizens in that prison without a hearing; ordered the death penalty without a trial; allowed the powerful, rich or famous to control policy; selectively prosecuted crimes (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); conducted criminal trials without defense counsel; used truth serum to force confessions; maintained constant surveillance over all citizens; offered no elections and no democratic lawmaking process; and controlled the press?

“You might assume that the above list is the work of some despotic central African nation, but it is actually the product of the Ministry of Magic, the magician’s government in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.”

Barton said he thinks the anti-government thread that runs through the Potter novels is significant because the books have great potential to sway public opinion.