In November 1906, Russia’s tsarist regime launched a land reform under which peasants, who had held most of their land communally and in multiple scattered plots, obtained rights to convert to exclusive ownership and to consolidate their tracts. In Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime, 1906–1915: The Creation of Private...

The growth of law and litigation since the 1960s is often decried for being costly and inefficient. But what about the benefits? Hasn't expanded liability also produced greater fairness and accountability and more responsible decisions? In his new book, Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law (Norton, 2009),...

When does federal law trump state law? Federal preemption has become the stuff of public debate and of major news stories. Consumer advocates, plaintiffs attorneys, and state officials argue that broad federal preemption claims interfere with the states’ historic police power to protect their citizens against corporate misconduct. Corporations and...

On both sides of the Atlantic, "citizenship" is the subject of vital and often contentious policy debates. In the United States, a nation famously founded on a creed rather than blood ties, the question of what it means to be an American citizen has always been central to the country's...

On November 13, AEI will host a lecture by Yegor Gaidar, acting prime minister during the first government of President Boris Yeltsin and the architect of the free-market revolution in post-Soviet Russia. Mr. Gaidar will relate the lessons of the Soviet state’s failure to the new direction of the Kremlin...

The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky--former CEO of the YUKOS oil company and Russia’s richest man--begins this month in Moscow. Part of a broader, yearlong judicial assault by the Russian government on YUKOS, Russia’s largest oil exporter, the Khodorkovsky case is certain to have repercussions far beyond the courtroom--foremost in its...

Is Russia reverting to state control of enterprise, as exemplified by the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky?