KOL106 | Peter Schiff Show: Obamacare, Patent Reform

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 106.

I was a guest today on the Peter Schiff Show (guest host Stefan Molyneux), discussing:

ObamaCare’s Next Legal Hurdle.
Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney & director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, on how ObamaCare still fails any reasonable legal test, whether anything constructive may come from the Apple/Samsung battle, and why entrepreneurs needn’t worry about their intellectual property.

Links to issues discussed:

• Oklahoma lawsuit to derail Obamacare?
• House passes Innovation Act by vote of 325-91: a small solution to a big patent problem

See also Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes: From an 1884 paperby James C. Carter, The Proposed Codification of Our Common Law: A Paper Prepared at the Request of The Committee of the Bar Association of the City of New York, Appointed to Oppose the Measure, defending New York’s common law from David Dudley Field’s attempt to (legislatively) codify it:

At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle!

For more on problems of legislation, and discussion of legal codes and codification efforts, see myLegislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society; and the articles collected here; also my posts Book Recommendations: Private, International, and Common Law; Legal Theory and The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons. In particular, for further related commentary, see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, e.g., note 78 and related text.