The Harvard Law School Library staff invites you to attend a book talk and panel discussion in celebration of Professor Joseph W. Singer’s recently published book, No Freedom without Regulation: The Hidden Lesson of the Subprime Crisis (Yale University Press).
Wednesday, October 7, 2015, 12:00 noon.
Harvard Law School Room WCC 2019 Milstein West A (Directions)
Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library.
Lunch will be served.
Professor Joseph William Singer is the Bussey Professor of Law. He has been teaching at Harvard Law School since 1992. He was appointed Bussey Professor of Law in 2006. He began teaching at Boston University School of Law in 1984. Singer received a B.A. from Williams College in 1976, an A.M. in political science from Harvard in 1978, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981. He clerked for Justice Morris Pashman on the Supreme Court of New Jersey from 1981 to 1982 and was an associate at the law firm of Palmer & Dodge in Boston, focusing on municipal law, from 1982 to 1984. He teaches and writes about property law, conflict of laws, federal Indian law. He also writes about legal theory with an emphasis on moral and political philosophy.
He has published more than 70 law review articles. He is one of the executive editors of the 2012 edition of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (with 2015 Supplement). He has written a casebook and a treatise on property law, as well as No Freedom Without Regulation: The Hidden Lesson of the Subprime Crisis (2015), Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property (2000), and The Edges of the Field: Lessons on the Obligations of Ownership (2000).
“Almost everyone who follows politics or economics agrees on one thing: more regulation means less freedom. Joseph William Singer, one of the world’s most respected experts on property law, explains why this understanding of regulation is simply wrong. While analysts as ideologically divided as Alan Greenspan and Joseph Stiglitz have framed regulatory questions as a matter of governments versus markets, Singer reminds us of what we’ve willfully forgotten: government is not inherently opposed to free markets or private property, but is, in fact, necessary to their very existence. Singer uses the recent subprime crisis to demonstrate:
Regulation’s essential importance for freedom and democracy
Why consumer protection laws are a basic pillar of economic freedom
How private property rests on a regulatory infrastructure
Why liberals and conservatives actually agree on these relationships far more than they disagree
This concise volume is essential reading for policy makers, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and financial professionals on both sides of the aisle.” — Yale University Press
Book talk panelists include Harvard Law School Professors:
Christine A. Desan, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law.
John C.P. Goldberg, Eli Goldston Professor of Law.
Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law.
Todd D. Rakoff, Byrne Professor of Administrative Law.
Henry E. Smith, Fessenden Professor of Law & Director, Project on the Foundations of Private Law.