Judge Guido Calabresi : The Future of Law and Economics [0:00-5:01]

I want to welcome everybody today to the National Constitution Center. As all of you, I'm sure immediately figured out I am not Jeff Rosen. I am Mike Gerhardt, the scholar of residence here at the National Constitution Center and I'm sorry that Jeff is not going to be here today. That leaves for me the extraordinary privilege of being the host for today's program. It also leaves me some obligation to do some of the logistics. So I want to just cover some of the basics for how we conduct programs like this. To begin with, and we all know this happens in movies, it happens here at two. So I'd appreciate everybody turning off their cell phones or silencing them. And at the same time, I want you all to be aware that we will be collecting questions from the audience. So please jot down your question on the note card you've been given and hand your question to a staff member maybe walking up or down the stairs and eventually I'll get those questions and hopefully we'll be able to ask a number of them. Following today's program, there'll be a book sale and signing down stairs in the main lobby and copies of the book are on sale in the museum store. I also want to let you know about some upcoming events real quickly. Next Monday, February 8th, Dean Rooter of the Federal Society and John Yu, former Justice Department official and Berkeley Law Professor, are joined by former White House Council aboard in Gray and Center for Equal Opportunity President Linda Chavez to discuss why the concentration of power in administrative agencies may be the greatest threat to our liberties today. Then on February 16th, celebrated constitutional scholars, Josh Blackman, Adam Cox, Christina Rodriguez, and Nicholas Quinn Rosencrantz joined the Center for a conversation around whether or not the president has gone too far in immigration. And for a full schedule of town hall programs, visit constitutioncenter.org slash debate or grab a winter brochure at the registration table. So now I want to take the enormous pleasure and great privilege of introducing our distinguished guest today. Judge Guido Calibration is, if I may say so, a national treasure. One of the most distinguished teachers, scholars, judges, and I would even say legal statesmen of our time. He was appointed in the United States Circuit Judge in July 1994 and entered into duty on September 16th, 1994. Prior to that appointment, he was Dean and Sterling Professor at Yale Law School, where he began teaching in 1959, and is now Sterling Professor Emeritus and Professor Soria lecturer in law. Judge Calibrecy received his BAS degree, Summa Cum Laude from Yale College in 1953, a BA degree with first class honors from Magdalen College, Oxford University in 1995, an LLB degree, Magna Cum Laude, in 1958 from Yale Law School and MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, from Oxford in 1959. A Rhodes Scholar, Judge Calibrecy served as the note editor of the Yale Law Journal in 1957-1958, while graduating first in his Law School class. And following graduation, he clerked for Justice Hugo Black of the United States Supreme Court. He has been awarded some 50 honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad and is the author of six books and more than 100 articles on law and related subjects. And that just is the tip of the iceberg. We are so lucky, we get many wonderful people here at the National Constitution Center, none more wonderful, erudite or thoughtful than my guest today. So without any further ado, Judge Calibrecy, I would like to actually begin our conversation by having you tell us which really came first for you, law or economics? So economics came first. I studied, when I went to college, I thought it would be a mathematician. That's what I was interested in. And I realized that before I was getting the answers better than other people, because I have a logical mind and quick, I didn't know where I was going. And there were people who were making mistakes, but knew where they were going. And they were mathematicians, I was not. So I turned to something I loved, history, and I thought it would be a historian.