Is John Roberts a Republican Party Socialist?

This is a question I had to ask myself after reading a column by Walt Williams, the self-proclaimed "people's economist" (done with the requisite cheek), and today's LA Times article on the "modesty" of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The judge issued a highly measured statement of the role of precedent -- the phenomenon known as stare decisis in legal circles:

Roberts emphasized that a modest judge would not see his role as one of overturning legal precedents.

"A judge needs the humility to appreciate that he is not necessarily the first person to confront a particular issue," he wrote. "Precedent plays an important role in promoting the stability of the legal system, and a sound judicial philosophy should reflect recognition of the fact that the judge operates within a system of rules developed over the years by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath."

Will a future Justice Roberts continue to sanction the false dichotomy in American jurisprudence between individual rights deemed "fundamental" and property rights, which were a core consideration of both the Founders and American law until the advent of the so-called "Progressive Era"? Williams writes:

I own myself and you own yourself. That's why it's immoral to rape or murder. It violates a person's property rights. The fact of self-ownership also helps explain why theft is immoral. In order for self-ownership to be meaningful, a person must have ownership rights to what he produces or earns. [...]

Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

One hopes that Judge Roberts did learn a thing or two about property rights in his flirtations with that radical cabal known as the Federalist Society.

Surely, a "thoughtful skeptic" (which Roberts seems to posit himself as) would find much that is disagreeable in property law today. In the legal academy, property rights are considered "dusty doctrines," and one need only to pick up a caselaw book to see the development firsthand (or a treatise from Erwin Chemerinsky or Laurence Tribe to get a cursory flavor). Rights that were once considered an essential aspect of individual liberty and citizenship are now subject to an ever-increasing array of restrictions or outright naked plunder by public authorities.

UCLA Professor Harold Demsetz wrote the most succinct article I came across in law school on property, "Toward a Theory of Property Rights." Too bad that specific piece of assigned reading came in the first week! Ronald Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost" should be required reading for every libertarian, if not every intelligent American. I also like most anything by Judge Richard A. Posner and University of Chicago Professor Richard A. Epstein as well. When all is said and done, Posner will stand alongside Judge Learned Hand as the best judge never to make the Supreme Court. And I have to ask myself, why isn't Posner's Sex and Reason on my bookshelf yet?