Currie Lecture 2016 | Guido Calabresi, Equality in the American Constitution [25:25-30:26]

And about this same time I was courting my wife and I went to her house and I saw a print of a rather ugly looking fellow who was reading something while somebody held a taper, a great porch behind it. And I said, what's that? And my wife's father, a wonderful man, said, that's my great grandfather, my wife's great, great grandfather, Morris Tyler, mayor of New Haven during the Civil War, reading the riot act against the draft rioting. Very proud because this family, my wife's family had been anti-slavery, he was a Democrat that Morris Tyler, but a war Democrat for Lincoln on the right side. The first anti-slavery petition in the country was signed by an Abraham Tyler, a collateral ancestor way back in the 18th century. And I said, this poor poor was dating his daughter, but who were the draft rioters? And my father-in-law, cold roast New Englander, said, I don't really know. And I said, I know, they were poor Irish, who had fled to New York and New Haven. And from the potato famine, and had no interest in dying in a swamp, were of a great cause that wasn't theirs. They were the ones who would be dying, because after all, the draft was there, but the wealthy could buy substitutes and not go. And I said, I would feel a lot happier about this, if among the people who would be going getting drafted and dying in the causes where Daggots, Colby's, Tyler's, hookers, the old New Haven names, at which point my father-in-law to be lit up and said, good, let me take you to the grocery cemetery and show you how many Daggots, Colby's, Tyler's and Cooper actually were there and died. Because in New Haven, we did go along, by the way, Maris Vermeier lost the next election and was elected lieutenant governor, because the state had fewer Irish than New Haven. Okay, that made me think about what is really the telling point with respect to this. And that is that there should be a Fifth Amendment taking clause, link, and equality link with respect to when we have affirmative action. That is, there should be something that makes the burden be put, not just on the kids who are there, on the poor white steel worker who loses his job so that a poor black steel worker gets the job, but something that says we all pay, all of us, Daggots, Colby's, Tyler's, hookers. That's what the Fifth Amendment taking clause does when we're talking about taking the part. Taking somebody's land to build a park, taking somebody's land to build a highway. We always say we must compensate and charge all of us for this so that what we are doing is what? The first thing is so that we are sure that we really want to do this. You know what the taking clause, and this is where I go back to being a little bit lawyer economists saying that so that we are sure that we want it, because it's very easy to say I want the park. If I don't have to pay for it, but the person who owns the park, it's very easy to say I want this, infringement and liberty, if that infringement and liberty is only on you.