… is from page 9 of Robert Higgs’s pioneering 1997 paper “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War,” as this paper appears as Chapter 1 of Robert Higgs’s superb 2006 collection, Depression, War, and Cold War:
In any event, the security of private property rights rests not so much on the letter of the law as on the character of the government that enforces, or threatens, presumptive rights.
