Randy Evan Barnett (born February 5, 1952, in Chicago) is an American lawyer, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and legal theorist. He writes about the libertarian theory of law and contract theory, constitutional law, and jurisprudence. After attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Barnett worked as a prosecutor in Chicago, Illinois. Barnett's first academic position was at the Chicago-Kent College of Law of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Section 1. All persons are equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights which they retain when forming any government, amongst which are the enjoying, defending and preserving of their life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting real and personal property, making binding contracts of their choosing, and pursuing their happiness and safety.Section 2. The due process of law shall be construed to provide the opportunity to introduce evidence or otherwise show that a law, regulation or order is an infringement of such rights of any citizen or legal resident of the United States, and the party defending the challenged law, regulation, or order shall have the burden of establishing the basis in law and fact of its conformity with this Constitution.  The amendment is a direct cousin of the Tenth Amendment, but it applies to the people of the U.S. and not the states.  Section 1 puts the Declaration of Independence into coded law. That includes its preamble, which allows for people to live their lives the way they see fit. The proposed right of "making binding contracts of their choosing" would appear to resurrect the legal doctrine of economic due process, which during the Lochner era, was used by the Supreme Court to strike down a wide variety of state and federal laws affecting business, including child-labor and minimum-wage laws.  Section 2 allows all legal persons of the United States to challenge any law that restricts their rights, and puts the burden of proof (fact) on federal, state, and local governments to argue otherwise. Any attempt to establish the constitutionality of any law is thus rested within the government.

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