Six Perspectives on Writing in Defense of Liberty

Timothy Sandefur is vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and holds the Duncan Chair in Constitutional Government. He litigates important cases for economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other matters in states across the country.

Sandefur is the author of several books, including The Right to Earn a Living (2010), The Conscience of the Constitution (2014), The Permission Society (2016), Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America (coauthored with Christina Sandefur, 2016), and Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man (2018), as well as more than fifty scholarly articles on subjects including Indian law, antitrust, copyright law, the constitutional issues involved in the Civil War, and the political philosophy of Shakespeare, ancient Greek drama, and Star Trek. A frequent guest on radio and television, he is known as “Tim the Lawyer” on the Armstrong and Getty Program, and his writings have appeared in Reason, National Review, the Claremont Review of Books, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Objective Standard, where he is a contributing editor.

Few writers in the liberty movement are as dynamic and inspiring as Virginia Postrel, former editor of Reason magazine and author of The Future and Its Enemies (1998), The Substance of Style (2003), The Power of Glamour (2013), and The Fabric of Civilization (2020). Winner of the 2011 Bastiat prize, Postrel started her writing career reporting for the Wall Street Journal and has been a columnist for the New York Times and The Atlantic. She serves on the board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University, where she teaches classes combining the humanities and economics.

Deborah La Fetra is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. In her thirty-plus years litigating in defense of individual rights, she has written and edited countless briefs, primarily for Supreme Court cases. She has published law review articles, most recently Miranda for Janus: The Government’s Obligation to Ensure Informed Waiver of Constitutional Rights, and dozens of opinion pieces in the mainstream and legal press, including The Hill, American Thinker, Washington Examiner, Houston Business Journal, and The San Francisco Daily Journal. Her work focuses on free speech and property rights.

Donna Matias is an attorney specializing in economic liberty cases at Pacific Legal Foundation. She has taught writing at George Mason University (now Antonin Scalia) Law School, the University of San Diego School of Law, and VanDamme Academy. In addition to writing and editing her share of legal briefs, Donna has authored op-eds challenging barriers to interracial adoption, free speech, and entrepreneurship; these have appeared in Austin-American Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, and The Los Angeles Daily Journal, among others. She has published studies on barriers to entrepreneurship in California and San Antonio, Texas. Additionally, Donna has contributed a chapter for a textbook on immigration law as well as one for the anthology From Data to Public Policy: Affirmative Action, Sexual Harassment, Domestic Violence, and Social Welfare.

Jon Miltimore is managing editor of FEE.org. He graduated from the Institute for Humane Studies journalism program, worked as a reporter for the Panama City News Herald, and served as an intern in the speechwriting department of President George W. Bush. His work has been published at Newsweek, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, and Epoch Times and cited by TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. He has served in editorial roles at History Channel magazine, Intellectual Takeout, and Scout Media Network.

Jon Hersey is managing editor of The Objective Standard and holds fellowships at Foundation for Economic Education and Objective Standard Institute, where he teaches courses on “How to Write Powerfully in Defense of Liberty.” He is the author of Seven Steps for Writing in Defense of Freedom and hosts the “Philosophy for Flourishing” podcast. His work has been published at Quillette, FEE.org, Catalyst, and The Objective Standard.