Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine invented out of whole cloth by the U.S. Supreme Court that protects government agents, including particularly law enforcement officers, who violate someone’s constitutional rights from federal civil liability. The Cato Institute is pleased to announce a new website dedicated to explaining how and why the qualified immunity doctrine needs to be eliminated.
At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued last week reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent.
In the past several years, the national movement to end drug prohibition has accelerated. Nine states and Washington, DC, have legalized recreational marijuana, with at least three more states (Connecticut, Michigan, and Ohio) likely to vote on legalization by the end of 2018. A new bulletin from Cato scholar Jeffrey Miron uses the most recent available data to estimate the fiscal windfall that would be achieved through drug legalization. All told, says Miron, drug legalization could generate up to $106.7 billion in annual budgetary gains for federal, state, and local governments.
Since the early 1990s, several states have passed restrictions on firearm magazines as a purported public safety measure. To date, the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to hear cases surrounding these “high-capacity” magazine bans. This has led to a fractured and unpredictable state of the law. In a new bulletin, Cato scholar Matthew Larosiere argues that these laws, as well as the “assault weapon” bans they tend to come packaged with, are abridgments of the natural right to self-defense. Moreover, says Larosiere, they fail to provide sufficient benefit to justify their inherent costs.
August 17, 2018
August 17, 2018
August 17, 2018
August 23
Featuring William P. Ruger (@WillRuger), Vice President of Research and Policy, Charles Koch Institute; and Jason Sorens (@JasonSorens), Lecturer and Program Director of the Political Economy Project, Dartmouth College; John Samples (@JohnSamplesCato), Vice President, Cato Institute.
12:00PM to 12:30PM EDTAugust 24
Featuring William P. Ruger, Vice President of Research and Policy, Charles Koch Institute; Chris Edwards, Editor, DownsizingGovernment.org, Cato Institute; and Jason Sorens, Lecturer and Program Director of the Political Economy Project, Dartmouth College; moderated by Matt Weibel, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.
12:00PM to 1:00PM EDTSeptember 4
Featuring William Binney, Former Crypto-Mathematician, NSA; Kirk Wiebe, Former Senior Analyst, NSA; Edward Loomis, Former Computer Systems Analyst, NSA; Thomas Drake, Former Senior Executive Service Member, NSA; and Diane Roark, Former Professional Staff Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; moderated by Patrick Eddington, Policy Analyst in Homeland Security and Civil Liberties, Cato Institute.
10:00AM to 12:00PM EDT
Why is the American health care system so dysfunctional and costly? How can it be fixed? Overcharged – Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care, a new Cato Institute book, drills into these issues with exceptional energy and power and is the culmination of years of research by authors Charles Silver and David Hyman. Overcharged lays bare the root causes of why health care is so expensive, out of control, and operates with no apparent accountability, and then shows how subjecting our health care system to the same competitive forces that apply to the rest of the economy will result in lower costs and improved access for all.
To encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in America’s founding documents, the Cato Institute published this pocket-size edition.
The Cato Institute offers a wealth of online educational audio and video resources, from self-paced guides on the ideas of liberty and the principles of economics, to exclusive, archived lectures by thinkers such as Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek. Browse through some highlights of our collections, for personal study or for use in the classroom.
The annual Constitution Day symposium, presented by Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies, marks the day in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the U.S. Constitution. We celebrate that event each year with the release of the new issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review and with a day-long symposium featuring noted scholars discussing the recently concluded Supreme Court term and the important cases coming up.
The Dangers of Naïve Faith in Big Government
Don’t Blame Ridesharing for Mass Transit’s Woes
Why Xi Jinping Thought Is a Threat to China’s Future
China’s institutional infrastructure is weaker than it might appear at first glance.
Want to Make Child Care Cheaper and More Accessible? Deregulate It.
The rules the states impose raise costs. That’s hard on poorer people and particularly single mothers.
Venezuela Is on the Verge of a Massive Humanitarian and Economic Collapse. the Culprit? Socialism.
Alex Jones and the Bigger Questions of Internet Governance
As a legal matter, social media companies have broad discretion to police their platforms. That is how it should be. But they need to make their authority legitimate.
The TSA Has a New Program That Could Spy on You. It’s a Massive Waste of Money.
Are Trump’s Economic Policies Really Making America Great?