Hayek Program Podcast

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Nathan Goodman chats with Anthony Gregory on his latest book, New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State. Most Americans remember the New Deal as the crucible of modern liberalism. But while it is most closely associated with Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Depression and provide social security for the elderly, we have failed to acknowledge one of its most enduring legacies: its war on crime. The book reassesses the political importance of the 1930s by highlighting the general crisis of lawlessness, arguing that the Roosevelt administration’s criminal justice policies transformed liberalism and the constitutional order. They also helped legitimate government itself, transcending the institutional, jurisdictional, partisan, racial, and social divisions that had previously frustrated national enforcement authority.Anthony Gregory is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Anthon