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Professor Rappaport is Darling Foundation Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism. Professor Rappaport is the author of numerous law review articles in journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. His book, Originalism and the Good Constitution, which is coauthored with John McGinnis, was published by the Harvard University Press in 2013. Professor Rappaport is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he received a JD and a DCL (Law and Political Theory).

February 15, 2019|Certification, occupational licensing, Reciprocity

Completely Unjustified Occupational Licensing

by Mike Rappaport|4 Comments

Image: Basyn/Shutterstock.com

Requiring people to apply from scratch to get a new license when they move from one state to another is unjustified

February 13, 2019|helping the poor, Income equality, John Rawls, The Difference Principle

Helping the Poor versus Reducing Inequality

by Mike Rappaport|18 Comments

Image: Hyejin Kang / Shutterstock.com

It is not income equality, but making the poor better off that is an important value for government policy.

February 8, 2019|Mueller Investigation, Perjury, Process Crimes

Process Crimes and the Mueller Investigation

by Mike Rappaport|6 Comments

Close-up photo of Department of Justice headquarters entrance (Two Bridges Photography/Shutterstock.com)

One need not believe that process crimes are unimportant to conclude that they fail to demonstrate wronging in Trump Administration.

February 5, 2019|High implicit marginal tax rates, Means tested programs, The importance of work

Means-Tested Welfare and the Disincentive to Work

by Mike Rappaport|4 Comments

Placard at a supermarket in Muncie, Indiana advertising the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in January 2018 (Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock.com).

Means tested government programs with high implicit marginal tax rates are bad public policy.

January 30, 2019|Chief Justice Marshall, John Fabian Witt, Originalism

Why Supreme Court Judging Is Not Necessarily Partisan

by Mike Rappaport|6 Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, DC (Image: bakdc / Shutterstock.com).

Originalist justices need not be understood as deciding cases based on their political party.

January 24, 2019|jonathan gienapp, Originalism, Parchment Barriers, Second Creation

Parchment Barriers and the Determinateness of Constitutional Text

by Mike Rappaport|4 Comments

U.S. Constitution (Festa/Shutterstock.com)

Jonathan Gienapp's new book falsely sees the Framers' criticisms of parchment barriers as evidence that the Constitution did not have a fixed meaning.

January 22, 2019|Antideficiency Act, government shutdown, Government Shutdowns, Rand Paul, Smaller Government

De-Escalating the Budget Wars

by Mike Rappaport|3 Comments

The Renwick Gallery, a part of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C., January 4, 2019 (Image: bakdc/shutterstock.com).

Instead of closing the government, it could operate at a reduced percentage of the previous year’s spending levels.

January 15, 2019|Franklin Roosevelt, government failure, Haley Fiske, Herbert Hoover, market failure

Private Unemployment Insurance: Government Failure or Market Failure?

by Mike Rappaport|5 Comments

Image: Can Balicioglu / Shutterstock.com

While people assume private unemployment insurance was not practical, it was government prohibitions that blocked it from being sold prior to the New Deal.