Buchanan v. Samuels: The Cedar Rust Case Redux

That is the title of my most recent work-in-progress, available here via SSRN, which is currently “under review” at the Review of the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Below is the Introduction to my paper (footnotes omitted): “One of the most fascinating sessions at the 2025 meeting of the History of Economics Society (HES) was a roundtable on ‘The 50th anniversary of the Buchanan-Samuels Exchange.’ The roundtable featured an all-star roster of economic historians, including Marianne Johnson (Wisconsin), M. Ali Khan (Johns Hopkins), David M. Levy (George Mason), Steven Medema (Duke), Gary Mongiovi (St. John’s), Scott Scheall (Austin), and Emily Skarbek (Brown), all of whom illuminated various aspects of the original exchange of letters in the early 1970s between James Buchanan and Warren J. Samuels. As it happens, this intellectual exchange was motivated by an old takings case—Miller v. Schoene, decided in 1928—and takings law is one of my areas of expertise. The remainder…