Tocqueville’s thesis on the relation between religion and liberty could hardly be timelier. From events in the Middle East and the spread of Islamist violence in the name of religion to the mandated coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the interaction between religion and politics has once again become central to political life. Tocqueville, facing the coming of a new social and political order within the traditional society that was France, faced this relation between politics and religion with freshness and relevance. He was particularly interested in reporting to his French compatriots on how the Americans had successfully resolved what, to many Frenchmen, looked to be an insuperable conflict. His surprising thesis was that the right kind of arrangement—a certain kind of separation of church and state that was not also a complete separation of religion and politics—could be seen in nineteenth century America to be beneficial to both liberty and religion. This volume investigates whether Tocqueville’s depiction was valid for the America he investigated in the 1830s and whether it remains valid today.
 

This special volume, entitled "The rule of Law, Freedom, and Prosperity," presents symposium papers that attempt to understand the historical roots of the rule of law, its importance in freedom and economic growth, and the possibilities for exporting these lessons to developing countries.

Contributors include Joel Mokyr, Francesco Parisi, Peter Boettke, Paul J. Zak, Stephen Knack, James Buchanan, Robert Cooter, Bernie Black, Anna Tarrasova, and Susan Rose-Ackerman.

Supreme Court Economic Review is a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary series that applies world class economic and legal scholarship to the work of the Supreme Court of the United States. Contributions typically provide an economic analysis of the events that generated the Court's cases, its functioning as an organization, the reasoning the Court employs in reaching its decisions, and the societal impact of these verdicts. Beyond academic analysis, SCER contributors stimulate interest in the economic dimension of the Supreme Court and explore solutions for its manifold and complex problems.