Eminent Domain

Over at the University of Chicago Law Faculty blog, Judge (and Professor) Richard Posner and Professor Geof Stone are having a debate on the topic of "Civil Liberties and the War Against Terrorism." I'm eager to see what these two have to say about the topic, even if I already have a pretty good idea what both of them will say. Glenn Reynolds, Mr. Instapundit and a law prof himself, weighs in with this comment...

Not so much nuanced discussants like Posner and Stone, but press coverage and political rhetoric generally, tend to suggest that there's a "trade-off" between national security and freedom. But that's misleading. You don't buy national security by getting rid of freedom; you may, in fact, wind up less secure. (This is a point I was making back on September 13, 2001). Nor is it necessarily the case that improvements in national security burden freedom. They may, in fact, have no impact at all, or even result in more freedom in some ways. It just depends. Programs have to be judged on their merits.

I agree. Unfortunately, politics has taken away much of the rational discussion about this topic.