In the early 2000s, a widow named Sandy Meadows was demoted from her job in a supermarket floral department because of a Louisiana requirement that she possess a state florist’s license. In 2001, Abigail Burroughs, a young woman with cancer, died after repeatedly requesting—and being denied—the opportunity to try a new treatment under review at, and later approved by, the FDA. Martin Luther King wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail after being arrested for “parading without a permit.”
The Permission Society is full of such frustrating, at times devastating, stories about government callousness, ineptitude, and cynicism. But wherein, exactly, lies the problem? There are two forces at work in Timothy Sandefur’s answer: He presents a well-documented and persuasive case against ineffective regulation from unaccountable bureaucracies, absurdly restrictive licensing requirements, and other damaging laws. He also seeks to tie valid criticisms of such policies—based on their annoying-to-tragic outcomes—to the idea that they undermine or violate the Constitution. This argument mirrors an ongoing debate, mainly on the right, over the correct interpretation of originalism: Should justices seek to protect our “natural rights” or simply interpret the Constitution as a legal statute like any other?
