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{{Short description|American academic (born 1942)}}{{BLP sources|date=October 2023}}Roger Pilon (born November 28, 1942)WEB,weblink LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress), 2013-06-27, 2023-05-04,weblink live, is Vice President for Legal Affairs for the Cato Institute, and an American libertarian legal theorist. In particular, he has developed a libertarian{{dubious|Questioning Article's veracity|date=October 2023}} version of the rights theory of his teacher Alan Gewirth.

Education

Roger Pilon has three philosophy degrees: a B.A. degree from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D., both from the University of Chicago. He also earned a J.D. from George Washington University.

General background

Pilon is the publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His writing has appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. He also frequently appears on television shows and testifies before Congress. In addition, Pilon held five senior posts in the administration of Ronald Reagan,{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}{{peacock inline|date=October 2023}} during which was investigated for possibly disclosing classified information to a foreign government, but not prosecuted.He is married to Juliana Geran Pilon.NEWS, Johnston, David, Times, Special To the New York, 1989-11-10, Ex-U.S. Worker Angry at Justice Dept. 'Misconduct' Report, en-US, The New York Times,weblink 2023-10-08, 0362-4331, 2018-01-15,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180115123136weblink">weblink live,

Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution

{{tone|section|date=November 2023}}Pilon believes that the government only has power to regulate conduct that violates other people's rights. This view is in the tradition of John Locke's view of natural rights. An example of this is the use of contraceptives. Pilon reasons that since people using contraceptives (see Griswold v. Connecticut) were not violating anyone's rights, the state had no authority to regulate such activity. However, Pilon believes abortion is not a constitutionally-protected right. He reasons that everyone, he hopes, would agree that killing a baby one day after it is born is murder. Then, what is the difference between one day after and one day before? The answer is there is no principal difference. Then, what about two months before or three? This sort of line drawing, Pilon reasons, is meant to be left to the political branches.NEWS, Pilon, Roger, 2005-11-28, Alito and Abortion, en-US, Wall Street Journal,weblink 2023-10-08, 0099-9660, Pilon believes that Congress should be kept within its enumerated powers. He believes the Supreme Court of the United States has failed to limit Congress with the spending power and the commerce power. He refers to it as the "so-called spending power" because nowhere in the Constitution is it an independent power. Therefore, Congress can spend money only to further its otherwise enumerated powers. One of those powers is the power to regulate commerce among the states, nations, and Indian tribes.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}Pilon believes that the court was incorrect in Wickard v. Filburn to assert that Congress can regulate activity that, aggregated together, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Pilon reasons that everything has some effect on commerce; therefore, the court's reasoning essentially makes Congress's power unlimited. Pilon states, however, that United States v. Lopez fixed this problem to a small degree, but, then again, Gonzales v. Raich weakened that decision.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

Works

• JOURNAL, Pilon, Roger, 1979, Ordering Rights Consistently: Or What We Do and Do Not Have Rights To, Georgia Law Review, 13, 1171–96,
• Roger Pilon, A Theory of Rights: Toward Limited Government (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1979).
• Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)
• Alan Gewirth, "The Basis and Content of Human Rights," Georgia Law Review 13 (1979): 1148)

References

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External links

• Pilon's information page on Cato.org
• {{C-SPAN|5798}}
• Follow Roger Pilon on Twitter

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