But the institutional setting is such that such legislation or political action almost certainly will not discourage governments from this kind of action. In fact the recent response to Kelo appears to largely consist of deceptive laws being passed which purport to restrict government action in that area but actually maintain or expand it. (See volokh on the topic). And this is subject to an explicit Constitutional protection, the kind that is normally supposed to protect minority interests from majority interests absent amendments.

First, when one is discussing the effects of rich patrons, perhaps it’s not the amount so much as what is done with it. The key to the right-wing legal movement (more on that in my second comment) is that a small number of billionaires were willing to commit (a) serious money, (b) over a couple of decades, (c) to long-term institutional change, (d) using multiple methods to see which worked (a key insight of your book). Funding a set of not particularly-connected pro bono cases might not have the same effect, for example, as funding a set of seminars for federal judges, and keeping the people who ran the seminars available over time as long-term contacts. In one of his columns back in the 90’s Paul Krugman pointed out that the pure research funding for economics was very, very small, so any billionaire could match that out of petty cash. IMHO, this probably contributed strongly to the current corruption in economics. I’ve seen the complaint made before that liberal foundations tend to be too specific project- and cause-oriented, and don’t fund continuation of effort, or coordination of efforts between different causes. This results in more right-wing people who have spent years building expertise, connections internal to the right-wing network, and connections to the media and to governing institutions. For example, if one looks at the budgets of the Washington, DC-area ‘think tanks’ (IIRC), Heritage alone has the budget of the top several liberal institutions.

In addition, we can come up with radical right-wing foundations, but how many billionaires are as far left as Scaife, Olin, Koch, and Bradley are to the right? What’s the equivalent to the Pioneer Fund? Are there any college which are as far left as Liberty, Regent, etc. are on the right? We see Thomas Monaghan founding a hard-right Law School (Ave Maria); what’s the equivalent on the left? (note – not ‘liberal’, but truly leftist).

Second, IMHO the mistake everybody makes is that this is not a ‘conservative’ legal movement; much of it desires a radical revolution in US law, government, business and society. Some of that is radical right-wing, some of it is radical reactionary (going back to an imagined past, 40-60 years ago), and some of it is libertarianism (which ranges from reasonable to people who haven’t figured out that ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ was fiction).

That explains the alleged contradictions – right-wingers who want to increase corporate wealth and power are comfortable using libertarians, and may even tolerate small amounts of time and money spent on those libertarian causes (the drug war) which aren’t helpful to the rich. Note, as in your book, that if those libertarians are true libertarians, and spend significant amounts of time and money on those aspects of libertarianism which threaten the rich, they’ll end up cut off from the money teat. Thus, we end up with libertarian lawyers who might spend far more time on easing corporate regulation than easing drug laws, and right-wing groups pursuing a more purely cultural tact (Thomas Moore Legal Center) who seem to be pretty pathetic and low-rent.

The way that I see it is that the right-wing legal movement is primarily about redistributing wealth upwards; the rest are unnecessary hangers-on and protective coloration.

The New Deal was able to draw on a law and economics movement. It was Institutionalist, though.

From a recent Van Horn and Philip Mirowski, I learn that the Mont Pelerin Society was paid for by Harold Luhnow, a rich arse.

Ideas have not been winning out in law and economics on the basis of intellectual argument. The results have been bought. Contrast the intellectual courage of the Webbs when founding the London School of Economics. Beatrice and Sidney Webb did not fund searches for a pre-determined conclusion.

This is an interesting case. It is hard to believe that modern liberals want the government to be able to tear down one’s house to give the land to someone third party to build another type of house for fourth party. Yet somehow the institutional structure is tilted so heavily that decisions like Kelo don’t draw much ire from the liberal legal establishment, obviously don’t draw ire from the business establishment, aren’t going to be contradicted by the government (which likes having that power—perhaps not in spite of but rather because of the corruption that is almost inherent in eminent-domain for non-public use) leading to the situation where pretty much anyone in the electorate who finds out about it finds it crazy, yet nothing changes.