The Role of the State in Education
Richard A Epstein
1995 - 12
Richard AB Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished
Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where
he has taught since 1972.
Previously, he taught law at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972.
He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and since 1991 has been an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics.
His books include Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard, 1992); Cases and Materials on Torts (Little, Brown, 5th ed, 1990); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects and taught courses in contracts, criminal law, health law and policy, legal history, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence and taxation, torts, and workers' compensation.
His latest book, Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995), grew out of a series of lectures and
seminars given in New Zealand and Australia in 1990.
Introduction by Douglas Myers, chairman, New Zealand Business Roundtable
It is my very pleasant task to welcome you all here this evening. This is a very special occasion for the New Zealand Business Roundtable. We are honouring tonight two exceptionally distinguished individuals and friends.
Sir Ronald Trotter was the first chairman of the Business Round-table in its present form. He assumed that office in 1985, when New Zealand was taking its first steps in a very different economic direction.
On the basis of his business achievements over the previous 10 or 15 years, Ron was unquestionably New Zealand's leading business figure. He rose to that position in what we now call old New Zealand. What I personally admire so much about Ron is that he was one of the first to realise that the economic and business environment had to change-for the good of business and the country.
As chairman of the Business Roundtable he led us in embracing the changes of the 1980s and standing fast in support of a programme of economic liberalisation through a very testing period. The role was not without its share of criticism but it helped immensely in putting the country on a more secure footing.
At the same time Ron served:
When Ron retired recently as chairman of Fletcher Challenge, the prime minister, Mr Bolger, made a point of saying that no business leader had done more to help and advise New Zealand governments and to put himself at the service of the country.
Ron's name has been synonymous with ability, integrity and vision in business and national life. He is an honorary member of the Business Roundtable-the only person to be given that status-and will remain so as long as he wishes.
Sir Ron, we salute your achievements and thank you for everything you have done.
To commemorate Ron's contributions, the Business Roundtable has instituted this Sir Ronald Trotter lecture. It will be given annually by an outstanding international speaker on a major topic of public policy.
We are exceptionally privileged to have as our inaugural speaker Professor Richard Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Richard, it is a real pleasure to welcome you back to New Zealand.
Richard Epstein has been called the Hayek of our times. That is a big statement.
Hayek was the author of the 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, a 1974 Nobel prizewinner, and the scholar who did more than perhaps any other this century to demolish the case for socialism and central plan-ning. He lived just long enough to see the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the birth of an era of freer economies and more open societies.
For many years Hayek's ideas were seen as radical and impractical. The same can be said of the initial reactions to much of Richard Epstein's work.
A scholar in the Hayekian tradition, but working from a law and economics perspective, he has carried forward the inquiry into the principles of government and the good society, including that most basic of political questions, the relationship between the individual and the state.
Just over five years ago in this very room, Richard delivered a lec-ture entitled Simple Rules for a Complex World. This year an expanded version of that lecture appeared in the form of his latest book of the same name. The book is an extraordinarily powerful and original analysis of the mischief of the modern regulatory state, and it sets out a programme for undoing it. Will we look back on it in 40 years' time as the work that has outlined for us the road away from serfdom?
Professor Epstein has already made pathbreaking contributions in an astonishing range of fields. His work on labour law helped us in thinking about the kind of reforms that have been implemented in this country. His next book will be on health.
To my knowledge, Richard has not yet written at length on edu-cation. There is no topic that is more important in the current work programme of the Business Roundtable, and to our national efforts to become a clever, productive, civilised and tolerant society. I am sure tonight's lecture will stimulate us all to think in fresh ways about education and, who knows, we may see a book on the subject five years down the track.
Please welcome Professor Richard Epstein to give the Sir Ronald Trotter
Inaugural Lecture on The Role of the State in Education.
The Role of the State in Education
After an introduction like the one delivered by Douglas Myers, sometimes the safest thing to do is to sit down. It has been five and a half years since I last visited here, and I am happy to report that the changes in the mood that I have seen in New Zealand, and in its physical surroundings, have been palpable. When I arrived last time I found a sense of unease and despondency. Now people seem to be much more confident and assured about their future. Instead of talking about higher taxes they are talking about the coming tax reductions. Even Sir Geoffrey Palmer tells me that he is proud this country is now running a budget surplus. I think that the reforms already instituted have stood you in good stead not only at home but also internationally.
What you have asked me to do today is to talk about education, a subject very close to my heart, and indeed to my own professional career. I have written the odd piece about it, but not done as yet any sustained analysis of this complex area. The question is: how does one think about this topic in a comprehensive way? Here, as with all major problems of social organisation, essentially you have to take two bites at the apple. The first of these is to ask yourself what kind of world you would design if you could start with a clean slate. In other words, the question is how, in the original position or the state of nature, you would want to organise education if you were not obliged in some fundamental sense to first accept and then undo the mistakes that had been made by previous generations. This is not an easy task but I think one can delineate some fairly clear principles and at least shape in a coherent fashion the relevant alternatives.
The second question that you have to face, however, is one on which someone from outside New Zealand cannot advise you in any concrete detail, and it always involves a journey with unpleasant twists and turns. That is the issue of how you get from wherever you happen to be now to wherever you would like to go tomorrow. The question of transition requires both a strong compass which sets the direction, and a large amount of acrobatics and practical politics to avoid the looming perils of Scylla and Charybdis. I think I know something about using an intellectual compass to set our goals. It will, however, require some inspired local leadership to deal with the vexing issues of transition.
I shall tackle these two questions in sequence. First I shall talk about the state of nature and then consider the state of the world as it is today. Even if we can understand where we have come from and what we have done, I don't think we will find it easy to recreate some ideal state of affairs-in education or anything else. By the same token, however, I think that nobody ought to spurn incremental improve-ments. If we can make a piston engine run at 80 percent efficiency instead of 30 percent efficiency we have made a vast improvement and done a great service to mankind, even though there is 20 percent waste which turns out to be unavoidable. That is, I think, an inherent characteristic of all social institutions: we are never going to get to utopia, but that doesn't mean that we ought to give up trying to make matters better.