The government's push to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 is ill-advised, says the ASI's legal writer Preston Byrne, who argues that the civil liberties protections offered to the British people by the Human Rights Act 1998 must be buttressed, not erased. If there is a problem with the Human Rights Act, it's not that it goes too far – it's that it doesn't go nearly far enough.
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Statistician John C. Duffy and ASI fellow Christopher Snowdon assess the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, used as the basis for the British and Scottish governments' calls for minimum alcohol pricing. They find that the model is deeply flawed, based on faulty premises and used to justify policy far beyond what it actually proves.
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Tasmania's proposed smoking ban is another sign that anti-smoking campaigners are ready to come out of the closet and admit that they are prohibitionists, says Chris Snowdon.
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In recent years, believers in a small state have largely failed to convert good intellectual arguments against interventionism into concrete political achievements. Whig argues for a change of gears by liberals, away from politics and towards a focus on single-issue group campaigning.
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Commercial expression, anti-smoking extremism and the risks of hyper-regulation.
Christopher Snowdon examines the case for plain packaging of cigarettes, including examples from around the world. He finds that its supposed benefits are, in fact, nonexistant, and plain packaging laws may have significant unintended consequences as well, including making counterfeiting of cigarettes more common. Plain packaging laws could lead us down a slippery slope where alcohol and even fatty foods are also controlled by the government.
Should libertarians support assisted suicide? Or is the question akin to Locke's consideration of legalized slavery? Henry Oliver weighs the debate and argues that freedom over ones body is intrinsically linked to the freedom to die.
Some people might actually benefit from the nanny state, but the questions of who decides what is in people’s interests and whether individuals can be coerced will forever separate libertarians from paternalists, says Tom Papworth.
The US has effectively dropped the term 'War on Drugs', a tacit admission of that policy's failure. Here, Henry Oliver argues that Britain should learn from the rest of the world and its own history. The government should rethink its policies on drugs and find new policies that work.
In this article Dr Madsen Pirie discusses private options for university funding, arguing against a graduate tax. He proposes universities follow the Harvard model of funding and that the government should promote bequests to universities through tax relief.
This briefing paper, by lawyer and medical practitioner Anthony Barton, argues that both the legal aid and the Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) systems are flawed in that they give rise to situations which are not economically sustainable or politically acceptable. This paper suggests scrapping civil legal aid in almost all cases, and reforming the CFA system to deter risk-free speculative litigation.
The Adam Smith Institute is the UK’s leading libertarian think tank...
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