Freedom of contract is treated across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a core economic liberty: the right of consenting adults to enter into a bargain and have it enforced. Guests and host alike describe it as foundational to prosperity and to individual autonomy, while also describing its diminished standing in modern courts and its erosion through labor legislation.
The right and its standing
In the 2020 episode on the mini-administrative state, Bob Zadek characterizes economic rights as including “the right to have your contracts enforced, the right to enter into a bargain with another consenting adult and have that contract, if it doesn’t harm anybody, be enforceable.” He argues that economic liberty has become “a second-class set of rights” relative to political liberties such as free speech, worship and assembly, making it easier for the executive branch to deny people “the right to earn an honest living.” The Mini-Administrative State (2020)
Glenn Roper, responding, describes his organization’s mission as re-enshrining the value given to economic rights, which he glosses as “just the right to make a living, the right to run your business, the right to seek after and pursue a profession of your choice.” He explains that when such rights are challenged, courts apply the Rational Basis test: if a rational reason can be identified for a restriction, it will be upheld, and courts will even imagine reasons the government did not give. Roper calls this “a far departure from the understanding at the founding” and from much of American history. The Mini-Administrative State (2020)
Autonomy and private coercion
Matt Zwolinski, in the 2014 episode on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism, places freedom of contract among the institutions — along with free markets and private property rights — that “generally speaking, lend themselves to that kind of individual autonomy.” He says most gains in individual autonomy over the past 100 years have been due to those institutions. Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014)
Zwolinski also identifies a limit. Sometimes people “fall through the cracks” and are bossed around because the market they work in is not competitive — a down economy, a small town, few employers — leaving them to work for an employer or be unable to feed their family. In that position, he says, the employer can dictate terms including how many bathroom breaks they take an hour and in some cases who they can vote for, on pain of being fired. He argues this should concern libertarians and that they should feel some pull to provide a support mechanism so individuals are not put under the despotic power of any other individual or group such as a corporation. Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014)
Freedom of contract as natural resource
In the 2020 episode on floating jurisdictions, Zadek calls freedom of contract and private property “the ultimate natural resource,” saying you do not run out of it and that it is all you need in order to prosper. He describes honoring contracts, freedom of contract, private property and a judicial system that protects property rights as the keys to a vibrant economy — not natural resources or climate — and says even despotic rulers or monarchs recognize the need for money. Vote to Float (2020)
Tom W. Bell, the guest, discusses zones that import the common law, including the ZEDEs in Honduras and the Astana International Financial Centre in Kazakhstan, which he says aim at actual communities where people can live and work, unlike the business-oriented zones in the emirates. He contrasts his preferred approach — going “narrow and deep” in a small area — with what he characterizes as Cato’s “inch deep and a country wide” reform strategy. Vote to Float (2020)
Joe Quirk adds that more than 4,000 special economic zones exist worldwide and that there are 276 special administrative zones in the United States, depending on how they are defined. Zadek restates Bell’s point that Hong Kong changed the economic system in China not by force, and argues that the opposite system — one without free markets, private property, freedom of contract and courts protecting property rights — can only be sustained by force. Vote to Float (2020)
Erosion through labor law
In the 2023 episode on California legislation, Richard Epstein traces the judicial history. He says there was a long line of decisions holding that government efforts to require firms to unionize interfered with freedom of contract, citing a 1908 decision by Justice Harlan and a more elaborate version by Mahlon Pitney in a case decided in early 1915. He describes how those earlier cases were toppled, beginning with the Railway Labor Act in 1926, followed by the pro-union book The Labor Injunction by Felix Frankfurter and Nathan Greene in 1930, Norris-La Guardia in 1932, and the National Labor Relations Act after failed attempts in 1937. California Passes the Worst Piece of Legislation Since AB 5 (2023)
Epstein says the NLRA’s findings asserted there was no actual freedom of contract between management and work, and that the philosophical belief was that the moment you have an employee there is an inequality of bargaining power meaning the worker has no choice. He counters that wages rose consistently during the period in which workers were said to be oppressed, and that the single greatest improvement in human well-being took place roughly between 1870 and 1940, when labor laws were extremely hostile. He argues that the pre-New Deal period, from the end of the Civil War to the Second World War, was closest to a classical-liberal constitutional framework. California Passes the Worst Piece of Legislation Since AB 5 (2023)
Epstein also addresses safety, arguing that firms with reputations will improve safety even without liability because the loss to reputation exceeds the cost of prevention, and that whether or not employers are liable for accidents, it is in their interest to adopt better equipment. He warns that statutes like the California Fast Food Act should never see the light of day because the damage would last beyond repeal. California Passes the Worst Piece of Legislation Since AB 5 (2023)
Across episodes
The topic recurs across all four episodes with a consistent framing — freedom of contract as a foundational economic liberty — but the treatment shifts in emphasis. Zwolinski in 2014 treats it as an institution that generally advances autonomy while acknowledging cases of private coercion; Roper in 2020 describes its demotion to second-class status under the Rational Basis test; Bell and Quirk in 2020 present it as the engine of special economic zones and a “natural resource”; and Epstein in 2023 supplies the historical account of its erosion through labor law. The excerpts show development in the sense that later episodes supply the doctrinal and historical detail — the Rational Basis test, the early cases, the NLRA — that the earlier episode does not.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the names of the 1908 and 1915 cases Epstein cites, nor the specific constitutional provisions he alludes to. They do not give the full name or text of the California legislation discussed in the 2023 episode beyond Zadek’s reference to the California Fast Food Act. The excerpts also do not describe how any court has resolved a modern freedom-of-contract challenge, nor do they state the outcome of the ZEDE or Kazakhstan zone experiments.