Reviving the legal basis for our economic liberty N Ali Bokhari, now 39, emigrated from Pakistan in 2000 and eventually settled here as a taxi driver. The Supreme Court, which is supposed to resolve such contradictions among the circuits, should seize the opportunity to correct a 139-year-old error. The court said the law did nothing to protect the public and merely shielded licensed funeral directors from competition. He also has some enemies, including taxi and sedan companies, and a city government that is, as interventionist governments generally are, devoted to regulations that protect the strong by preserving the status quo. With the quiet support of the taxi companies, which have not raised rates since Bokhari and some similar entrepreneurs went into business, the limo companies got regulators to mandate a $45 minimum charge for any ride. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Tennessee law that prohibited anyone without a license from selling caskets. In 2004, however, the 10th Circuit upheld an Oklahoma law requiring online casket retailers to have funeral director's licenses that could take several years to get. In 2002, the 6th U. In 1873, in a 5-4 decision in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Supreme Court, without any warrant from legislative history of the 14th Amendment, construed "privileges or immunities" so narrowly as to make it a nullity. The 10th Circuit is right about the practice but is disgracefully tolerant of treating economic liberty as a plaything of politicians, who ought to be forbidden from favoring some interests and disfavoring others. Now, however, Bokhari may help catalyze reconsideration of the constitutional basis of economic liberty. Represented by the Austin, Texas, office of the Institute for Justice, the nation's only libertarian public interest law firm, Bokhari is seeking judicial recognition of his constitutional right to economic liberty. Bokhari bought a black Lincoln sedan and began offering cut-rate rides — an average of $25 — to and from the airport, around downtown, and in neighborhoods not well served by taxis. Giving the latter scant protection, courts have . Now he has 20, and 15 independent contractors with their own cars and a website and a lot of customers. But the Constitution, and especially the 14th Amendment, is supposed to protect the individual's liberty, including economic liberty, from government's depredations. But he had an idea: "I can build a better business model for something Nashville hasbeen missing. |