Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. By Randy E. Barnett. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 360p. $32.50.

Libertarianism Without Inequality. By Michael Otsuka. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 168p. $39.95.

According to Randy Barnett in Restoring the Lost Constitution, “the original meaning of the entire Constitution … is much more libertarian than the one selectively enforced by the Supreme Court” (p. 356). This is because, Barnett argues, the way that the Constitution has been interpreted by the Court over the past seventy years, that is, from the beginning of the New Deal on, has eviscerated a number of clauses and amendments that were expressly designed to limit the power of both federal and state government to interfere with the basic liberties or “natural rights” retained by the people. His ambitious goal is to restore these amendments and clauses to their original meaning through an exhaustive exploration of that meaning.