Wright Amendment Reform Act

Volumes for 1950-19 contained treaties and international agreements issued by the Secretary of State as United States treaties and other international agreements.

Following a vast expansion in the twentieth century, government is beginning to creak at the joints under its enormous weight. The signs are clear: a bloated civil service, low approval ratings for Congress and the President, increasing federal-state conflict, rampant distrust of politicians and government officials, record state deficits, and major unrest among public employees. In this compact, clearly written book, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein advocates a much smaller federal government, arguing that our over-regulated state allows too much discretion on the part of regulators, which results in arbitrary, unfair decisions, rent-seeking, and other abuses. Epstein bases his classical liberalism on the twin pillars of the rule of law and of private contracts and property rights—an overarching structure that allows private property to keep its form regardless of changes in population, tastes, technology, and wealth. This structure also makes possible a restrained public administration to implement limited objectives. Government continues to play a key role as night-watchman, but with the added flexibility in revenues and expenditures to attend to national defense and infrastructure formation. Although no legal system can eliminate the need for discretion in the management of both private and public affairs, predictable laws can cabin the zone of discretion and permit arbitrary decisions to be challenged. Joining a set of strong property rights with sound but limited public administration could strengthen the rule of law, with its virtues of neutrality, generality, clarity, consistency, and forward-lookingness, and reverse the contempt and cynicism that have overcome us.

When starting new airlines in response to government deregulation, entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe reduced some traditional service qualities (to reduce costs), concentrated on non-stop services between city pairs not already so connected, improved on-time performance, and offered low fares to win leisure travelers from the incumbents and to encourage more travel. In recent developments, some of the new airlines have offered optional extras (at higher fares) to attract business travelers and entered major routes alongside the legacy carriers. Within both the U.S. and Europe, deregulation removed most geographical barriers to expansion by short-haul airlines. Later, limited deregulation spread to other world regions, where many short-haul routes connect city pairs in different countries, and where governments have retained traditional two-country mechanisms restricting who may fly. To gain access to domestic routes in other countries, some new airlines are setting up affiliate companies in neighboring countries, with each company legally controlled in the country of domicile. With air travel growing strongly, especially in Asia, a common result is intense, but potentially short-lived, competition on major routes. The recent developments give clear signposts to likely mid-term outcomes, and make this an opportune time to report on the new-airline scene. The Airline Revolution will provide valuable economic analysis of this climate to students, airline professionals advancing to senior positions, public servants and others who provide advice to governments.