Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where he has taught since 1972, and the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (since 2000). Mr. Epstein has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a senior fellow at the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School since 1983. He has edited the Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Law and Economics, and at present he is a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. Mr. Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary topics and has taught courses on many subjects, including constitutional law, contracts, corporations, health law and policy, property, jurisprudence, patents, torts, and workers’ compensation. Mr. Epstein has authored many books, including Torts (1999), Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (1998), and Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (1985).

Charles Murray holds the W. H. Brady Chair at AEI. A political scientist by training, he writes about a broad range of social and cultural issues. Mr. Murray’s major books are Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (1984); In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (1988); The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein, 1994); and What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (1997). His next book is titled Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950, which Harpercollins will publish this October.