Earlier this month (1-6 July), I blogged about James Buchanan and Warren Samuels’s disagreement over Miller et al. v. Schoene (the infamous red cedar rust case), a landmark legal precedent that dramatically expanded the power of State and local governments to curtail private property rights without having to pay any compensation, let alone “just compensation” as required by the U.S. Constitution. For reference, below are the links to my relevant blog posts:

1. James Buchanan versus Warren Samuels (1 July)
2. Miller v. Schoene (2 July)
3. Why Miller v. Schoene? (3 July)
4. The reciprocal nature of the dispute in Miller v. Schoene (4 July)
5. Buchanan versus Samuels, round 5 (5 July)
6. Coase’s blind spot? (6 July)

As it happens, both economists not only presented their competing views of this controversial case on the erudite pages of the Journal of Law & Economics (see here, here, and here); they also corresponded with each other at length from May of 1972 until January of 1974, and for me, their private correspondence is even more fascinating and more compelling to read than their formal papers because it is here, behind the scenes, so to speak, where they are each trying to piece together and figure out the true sources of their disagreement.

In all, they exchanged 13 letters, which were subsequently edited and published in 1975. (See James M. Buchanan & Warren J. Samuels, On Some Fundamental Issues in Political Economy: An Exchange of Correspondence, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1975), pp. 15-38.) Therefore, to conclude my review of the Buchanan-Samuels exchange, I am including below the fold my favorite excerpts from each of their letters in chronological order; page numbers refer to the published version of their exchange, cited above:

Introduction

Page 15: “Just as each generation of economists has the burden of interpreting for itself the history of the discipline, each generation also confronts, directly or indirectly, the problem of the methodological foundations of economic analysis.”

Page 16: “… [the letters] are informal and exploratory ventures by two economists with clearly different points of view and approaches to government who nevertheless respect and are willing to learn from each other.”

Letter #1: 18 May 1972 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 19: “And, after all, this is the purpose, to carry the discussion since neither of us would surely claim to have any of the final answers in these issues that have been discussed for centuries.”

Ibid.: “It is almost impossible to be purely positivist here, and, of necessity, we look at common facts through different windows, to use Nietzsche’s term, and these windows are necessarily normative to a degree.”

Letter #2: May 24, 1972 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 20: “People will read normative things from any positive proposition, but in reality they are adding their own normative premise and it is from that premise they draw their normative inferences.”

Letter #3: 16 August 1972 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 21: “But we need to do more than sit outside, so to speak, and describe.”

Page 22: “But property, correctly interpreted, is nothing other than the way we define a man, his ability to do things. Hence, any government must defend property.”

Letter #4: August 23, 1972 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 22: “… ‘free men,’ Jim, is too general, it avoids the problems arising when principles of freedom conflict and it avoids too specifying the underlying conception of ‘freedom.’”

Page 23: “The real gut issues, which cannot be resolved once and for all time, are: whose values; the balancing of freedom and control; the balancing of continuity and change; the balancing of hierarchy and equality. There is no simple calculus of free men — or none that does not ignore important facets (someone’s important facets) of what it means to be free. Thus Hayek emphasized the rule of law, but as one of his own students (I believe) put it, there can be a foul law which we would not want all to be equally subject to. Moreover, the tragedy is that perhaps every institutional arrangement which perfects or cements freedom in one regard or for some people can be used to tyrannize others.”

Letter #5: 27 March 1973 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 25: “We have gone far far away from the constitutional order that I should think essential …. I am, basically, a ‘constitutionalist’ first of all, which is inherent in ‘individualism,’ terms that I gladly accept as descriptive of my position.”

Letter #6: April 5, 1973 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 26: “The second point has to do with your constitutionalism: whose constitution is it to be, since that will be of profound consequence in terms of results? Which rights will be protected and what provision for rights change in ways not loaded in favor of those in superior or advantageous positions in the status quo will be provided?”

Page 27: “Also I would urge that society is comprised of more than property rights, that there are functional equivalents to property rights which your analysis neglects, e.g., regulation, because (at least in part) you prefer a once-and-for-all-time determination and assignment of rights by law.”

Letter #7: August 8, 1973 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 28: “As both Washington Irving and Joseph Conrad said, along with many others, it is nice to treat the world as if we were sitting in an observer’s rocking chair and looking at its absurdities. But this is not enough. I think that I have, personally, some responsibility to do more than this.”

Letter #8: September 1, 1973 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 29: “I am not trying to play God, only trying to study the legal-economic world as it is.”

Page 30: “As for government, your once and for all time legal property rights identification and assignment process (quite a mouthful but very important) denies opportunity for future generations to review the social structure — even incrementally — and to revise institutions, including the Constitution. It perpetuates the past, which is to say, it perpetuates the decisions of those with power in the past (the status quo); it ignores non-Pareto optimal changes and their impact; it subjects the future to the system of the past.”

Page 33: “In sum, then I would say the following. You are primarily normative and I am primarily positive in our respective endeavors; you are trying to indicate how things would go if they were organized in the manner you prefer (e.g., your interpretation of Miller v. Schoene) and I am trying to objectively describe (as objectively as I can at any rate) how things are going in the way they are presently organized. Curiously, you take the status quo for granted in your normative system and I take it only as the object of my positive study.”

Letter #9: 16 November 1973 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 33: “In an extremely abstract model, one in which the status quo is very well defined, and agreed on, all changes, in any form, must require unanimous consent, at least in the limit of rules.”

Letter #10: December 13, 1973 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 34: “You are correct that we maintain our original differences but I think that now we are more informed about them. Perhaps there is communication failure also, I am not sure and tend to doubt it. Our differences are, first, over the valuational force of the status quo and, second, the role of positive and descriptive analysis.”

Letter #11: January 1, 1974 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 36: “Is this the ideal role you seek to play? I can respect this, but, if so, you need to rid yourself of evaluations, to quit talking about systems of privilege and the like, and to sit back, literally, in the scholar’s rocking chair and do nothing but observe the world that you see.”

Letter #12: January 7, 1974 (from Samuels to Buchanan)

Page 37: “Your position is based upon the value-status of the contractarian principle — which I find admirable but capable of severe abuse — and my position is based upon the value-status of positive, neutral description — which you find, I think, acceptable but capable of severe abuse.”

Ibid.: “Thus Knight could argue that there is precious little freedom even in a so-called free society ….”

Letter #13: 23 January 1974 (from Buchanan to Samuels)

Page 38: “… you will be perhaps amused to learn that the major criticism I got from Chicago Press referees was on my refusal to take an activist-partisan role and propose explicit reforms.”