Modern liberalism asserts the transcendental, autonomous self's 'natural rights' against others' moralistic and political preferences, and regards the economist's utilitarian social welfare theory as instrumental to the achievement of 'social justice'. Timothy Roth argues that the liberal enterprise ignores Kant's 'two points of view', confuses Kantian autonomy with moral and political license, mistakes utilitarian impersonality for impartiality, and takes no account of the indeterminacy of social welfare theory's fundamental theoretical constructs. In contrast, the author shows that Kant's...

Adam Smith is widely regarded as the 'founder of modern economics'. The author shows, however, that Smith's procedurally based, consequence-detached political economy, an approach shared by America's Founders, finds no expression in the economist's utilitarian, procedurally-detached theory of the state. This 'wrong turn' has meant that, if economists are ill-equipped to address an expanding federal enterprise in which utilitarian considerations trump the Smithian/Madisonian idea that means and ends must be morally and constitutionally constrained, they are also ineffectual bystanders as...