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Richard Epstein

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Richard Epstein is a recurring guest on The Bob Zadek Show, appearing across episodes from 2017 to 2023. He is identified as a professor of law at NYU Law School, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Bob Zadek describes him as having a trained scientific background and as schooled in economics, and introduces him as the founder and head of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law. Epstein’s appearances on the show span topics including foreign trade, climate change, sexual harassment law, California’s Proposition 12, and the California FAST Act.

On the show

8 appearances, 2017–2022.

Free trade and climate change

In a June 2017 episode, Zadek and Epstein discussed the economic principles of foreign trade, including mutual gain, specialization, and comparative advantage, and debunked common misconceptions about fair trade and trade deficits. The episode’s summary states that they explained why free trade benefits all parties involved despite political rhetoric to the contrary. No quotations from the exchange are preserved in the excerpt. Trump Vs. Free Trade with Richard Epstein (2017)

In August 2017, Epstein returned to discuss climate change. Zadek framed the episode as an examination of a worldwide political debate over matters of science, comparing it to the Scopes trial. Epstein argued that climate change has always been with us and that the system never spins out of control, calling it a self-stabilizing system, and illustrated the point with an analogy of two spheres. He said that human activity can affect the environment in ways no other species can, but that nothing people do would be like the meteor that crashed into the earth about 65 million years ago in the Yucatan. Richard Epstein on Climate Change (2017)

Epstein said that carbon dioxide cannot be thought of as the dominant player given the welter of other forces, noting that the single most important greenhouse gas is perhaps water vapor, and that carbon dioxide distributes itself uniformly throughout the earth while water vapor tends to concentrate in some areas but not others. He characterized himself as a mild skeptic or lukewarm-er, saying there is probably a weak positive connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, with the stress on the weak. He criticized the labels of denier and alarmist as not an intelligent way to run the debate, and said the correct questions are what impact carbon dioxide has on temperature changes and what other influences belong in the mix. Zadek described the episode as also critiquing the Paris Climate Accord as a wealth transfer mechanism and exploring benefits of carbon dioxide such as global greening, while advocating technological progress over alarmist policy. The excerpt also lists two callers, Nick, a life scientist, and Jacob, a listener. Richard Epstein on Climate Change (2017)

Sexual harassment law

In a March 2018 episode, Zadek and Epstein traced the legal and social evolution of sexual harassment law from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to modern campus adjudications. Epstein said the transformation of the material probably owes more to Catharine MacKinnon’s 1978 book Sexual Harassment of Working Women, in which she claimed that harassment in the workplace should be treated as a form of sex discrimination having to do with the conditions of employment. Epstein said he criticized that position as a technical matter, not because he favored sexual harassment, arguing the real issue is the near-close association between harassment and assault, traditionally covered by common laws of intentional infliction of emotional distress. An Intellectual Discussion of Sexual Harassment with Richard Epstein (2018)

Epstein described the Supreme Court as having been very chary and cautious, wanting relatively high thresholds, and said that as the matter became an administrative one enforced most notably by the Dear Colleague letters written by the Office of Civil Rights in 2011, the bar for sexual harassment became somewhat lower. He said Betsy DeVos and the Office of Civil Rights removed the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, saying in effect that they would rethink the thing from the ground up. He also said that even if all the decisions were overruled and Title VII and later Title IX were set aside, there would be an enormous push to put these things right back into the bill, and it would pass virtually unanimously tomorrow. The excerpt’s summary notes discussion of the Harvey Weinstein case, reputational markets, and defamation law, and names New York Times v. Sullivan among its topics. The episode’s speakers identify Epstein as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of law at NYU and the University of Chicago. An Intellectual Discussion of Sexual Harassment with Richard Epstein (2018)

Later episodes

A 2022 episode featured Zadek and Epstein discussing the constitutional implications of California’s Proposition 12, which regulates the living conditions of pigs raised for pork sold in the state, and the challenge brought by pork producers. Topics listed for the episode include the Dormant Commerce Clause, extraterritorial regulation, and how the Supreme Court might rule. The excerpt contains no quotations from the discussion. California’s Food Fight (2022)

In a January 2023 episode, Epstein returned to discuss the California FAST Recovery Act, which Zadek described as seeking to socialize the entire California fast food industry by putting it under strict governmental control. Zadek said the FAST Act was recently signed into law by the Governor and is an acronym for the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act. Epstein said the first thing to say about the statute is that it is indeed a fast one, that what it purports to do is much more modest than it turns out if you read the details, and that it first makes a series of findings about systematic forms of abuse inside the fast-food industry, which he called de rigueur for any effort to impose regulation because you have to have a villain in order to regulate. He noted that the findings give no particulars as to why the particular act is actually curing the problem. Zadek said other states are looking with curiosity, and perhaps envy, at what California has done. Which Side Are You On? (2022)

A February 2019 episode, built around a different guest, references a past show with Epstein on climate change cost-benefit analysis and points listeners to the archives. In that episode, the guest Mark Joffe discussed carbon taxes and cap-and-trade, saying that if you could price emissions correctly the market could take them into account, but that there is a lot of religion and not as much science as one might like in the climate change debate. Zadek responded that the difficulty of the cost-benefit accounting means don’t do it, and that government should not force people to behave in a certain way based upon speculation and superstition. Not Enough Bricks (2019)

Across episodes

The episodes do not show a single question argued across multiple appearances in a way that changed between earlier and later treatment. Free trade, climate change, sexual harassment law, Proposition 12, and the FAST Act each appear as distinct subjects in distinct episodes, with no excerpt showing the same question revisited and advanced by different participants.

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