For many people, Margaret Thatcher’s resignation (and now her death) will be one of those moments that they will never forget. Like the Kennedy assassination for the previous generation, many will always remember what they were doing when they heard the sad news.  

It was November 22, 1990 and I was about to leave my parents’ apartment in Zilina, Czechoslovakia, to meet a friend. Walking out of the door, I heard the radio announce the shocking news - Margaret Thatcher has resigned. How could it be? Wasn’t she a great success at home and a titan on the world stage? To us – the people of Eastern Europe who were enjoying their first year of freedom – she was much more than the first female British Prime Minister.  

She was an outspoken voice against communist oppression and a fearless promoter of the free markets. The communist media in Eastern Europe (and socialist media in Britain, one might add) spewed poison against her with obsessive regularity. For us that was very reassuring: if they hated her, she must have been good.  

Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, I never thought I would leave my hometown, let alone travel abroad and meet her. But meet her I did. It was October 5, 2002 and I was on a layover in London. Next day, I would board a plane for Washington and begin my work at the Cato Institute.  

My friends - Roger Bate, now at the AEI, and Richard Tren, now at the Searle Foundation – invited me to a dinner celebrating the launch of the Frederic Bastiat prize for free market journalism. One of the winners, coincidentally, was Amity Shlaes, whom I will have the pleasure of introducing at a Cato event this Thursday.   As Margaret Thatcher arrived – descending the stairs together with Denis - there was a sudden hush followed by great applause. By that time, she no longer made speeches and her public appearances were increasingly rare. Still, her presence added gravitas to the proceedings and launched a great prize that continues to this day.  

My friend Veronique De Rugy sat next to Mrs. Thatcher throughout the dinner and so, at some point, I walked over to say hello. Thatcher shook my hand and asked where I was from. When I said that I came from Czechoslovakia, she seemed genuinely delighted. I reminded her that people of Eastern Europe had a genuine affection for her and were grateful for what she did to bring about the end of communism. “You know,” I said, “the communists really hated you.” “Good, good,” she laughed, “I’m glad they did.” Then she gave me one of her piercing looks and said, “We won in the end.”

Yes you did, Margaret.

Adam Chandler, a Yale Law grad who recently completed a clerkship with Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, posted a SCOTUSblog piece this afternoon entitled “Cert.-stage amicus All-Stars: Where are they now?” Guess what? Cato’s number 4 on the list, right behind the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and our friends out at the Pacific Legal Foundation – with a very respectable success rate of 22.2 percent.

Five years ago, when Chandler last did these rankings, Cato wasn’t even on the chart. That’s when Ilya Shapiro joined us. Say no more. But I will. He’s done a bang-up job with Cato’s amicus program.

The importance of filing Supreme Court briefs at the cert stage cannot be overstated. That’s the time when the Court makes its up-or-down decision about whether even to take a case, and hence the time at which arguments can be made about the importance of the issues at stake and the broader implications. We at the Center for Constitutional Studies have always taken the long view, grounded in the Constitution’s First Principles, especially as they underpin the limited constitutional government the Framers envisioned.

Commenting on the ideological aspects of these developments (where “conservative” and “libertarian” are largely interchangeable), Chandler writes:

Overall, the ideological cast of the new entrants is more conservative, anti-regulatory, and pro-business than that of those they replaced. To varying degrees, all seven of the new entrants have conservative profiles, whereas several of those left off the list this year, like the Society of Professional Journalists and the National League of Cities, have no obvious ideological bent. Five years ago, I wrote that “the list of top amici is dominated by pro-business and anti-regulatory groups—such groups hold over half the slots in the top sixteen.” Now they hold over three-quarters.

And he adds: “While the conservative groups have stepped up their game, the liberals are still nowhere to be found.” Part of the reason for this trend is of course the ideological cast of the Court itself. But that’s not the whole story – after all, it takes only four votes for certiorari to be granted, and for the most part there are four reliably liberal votes on the Court. Just as important is a change in the constitutional debate. And we’ve played our part in bringing that change about. In fact, in another month or so you’ll find a symposium in the Chapman Law Review on the origins and character of the modern libertarian legal movement. Stay tuned for more on that.

I’ve never been a big Shakespeare fan, but that may need to change. It seems the Bard of Avon may be the world’s first libertarian.

Some of you are probably shaking your heads and saying that this is wrong, that Thomas Jefferson or Adam Smith are more deserving of this honor.

Others would argue we should go back earlier in time and give that title to John Locke.

But based on some new research reported in Tax-news.com, we need to travel back to the days of Shakespeare:

Uncertainty over the likely future success of his plays led William Shakespeare to do “all he could to avoid taxes,” new research by scholars at Aberystwyth University has claimed. The collaborative paper: “Reading with the Grain: Sustainability and the Literary Imagination,”…alleges that, in his “other” life as a major landowner, Shakespeare avoided paying his taxes, illegally hoarded food and sidelined in money lending. …According to Dr Jayne Archer, lead author and a lecturer in Renaissance literature at Aberystwyth: “There was another side to Shakespeare besides the brilliant playwright - a ruthless businessman who did all he could to avoid taxes, maximize profits at others’ expense and exploit the vulnerable - while also writing plays.”

In that short excerpt, we find three strong indications of Shakespeare’s libertarianism.

1. What does it mean that Shakespeare did everything he could to avoid taxes? His actions obviously would have upset the United Kingdom’s current political elite, which views tax maximization as a religious sacrament, but it shows that Shakespeare believed in the right of private property. Check one box for libertarianism.
2. What does it mean that the Bard “illegally hoarded food”? Well, such a law probably existed because government was interfering with the free market with something like price controls. Or there was a misguided hostility by the government against “speculation,” similar to what you would find from the deadbeats in today’s Occupy movement. In either event, Shakespeare was standing up for the principle of freedom of contract. Check another box for libertarianism.
3. Last but not least, what does it mean that Shakespeare “sidelined in money lending”? Nations used to have statist “usury laws” that interfered with the ability to charge interest when lending money. Shakespeare apparently didn’t think “usury” was a bad thing, so he was standing up for the liberty of consenting adults to engage in voluntary exchange. Check another box for libertarianism.

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