Epstein became known in the American legal community in 1985 with
Harvard University Press's publication of his book
Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain. In the book, Epstein argued that the "
Takings Clause" of the
Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitutionwhich reads, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation", and is traditionally viewed as a limit on the governmental power of
eminent domaingives constitutional protection to citizens' economic rights, and so requires the government to be regarded the same as any other private entity in a property dispute. The argument was controversial and sparked a great deal of debate on the interpretation of the takings clause after the book's publication. During
Clarence Thomas's
Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings in 1991, then-Senator
Joe Biden, "in a dramatic movement", held the book up and "repeatedly interrogated" Thomas about his position on the book's thesis. The book served as a focal point in the argument about the government's ability to control private property. It has also influenced how some courts view property rights and been cited by the
U.S. Supreme Court four times, including in the 1992 case
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. Epstein is an advocate of minimal legal regulation. In his 1995 book
Simple Rules for a Complex World, he consolidates much of his previous work and argues that simple rules work best because complexities create excessive costs. Complexity comes from attempting to do justice in individual cases. Complex rules are justifiable, however, if they can be opted out of. Drawing on
Gary Becker, he argues that the
Civil Rights Act and other
anti-discrimination legislation ought to be repealed. Consistent with the principles of
classical liberalism, he believes that the federal regulation on
same-sex marriage, the
Defense of Marriage Act, should be repealed, stating: : "Under our law, only the state may issue marriage licenses. That power carries with it a duty to serve all-comers on equal terms, which means that the state should not be able to pick and choose those on whom it bestows its favors. DOMA offends this principle in two ways. First, it excludes polygamous couples from receiving these marital benefits. Second, it excludes gay couples. Both groups contribute to the funds that support these various government programs. Both should share in its benefits." Epstein has criticized the Supreme Court ruling in
Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2007, he defended the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies against the cheaper, generic production of AIDS drugs, writing that "disregarding property rights in the name of human rights reduces human welfare around the globe". In 2014, Epstein argued against reparations for African Americans in a piece published on the Hoover Institution's website. Contributing to the anthology
Our American Story (2019), Epstein addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. Taking a decidedly skeptical approach, Epstein concluded that no new national narrative can be achieved "unless we engage in what I call American minimalism—a conscious reduction of the issues that we think are truly best handled as a nation and not better address by smaller subnational groups: states, local governments, and, most importantly, all sorts of small private organizations that are free to choose as they please in setting their own membership and mission."
COVID-19 pandemic In March and April 2020, Epstein wrote several essays published by the
Hoover Institution giving a contrarian account of the
COVID-19 pandemic and warning against extensive containment and mitigative
United States responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which he called an "overreaction". In a piece published on March 16, he argued that the word "pandemic" is not to be used lightly and that the virus should be allowed to run its course, predicting there would be 500 U.S. deaths. In early June, the U.S. death total surpassed 100,000. On March 24, when U.S. deaths had already exceeded 500, Epstein added a "Correction & Addendum", in which he changed his forecast to 5,000 deaths without changing the underlying model that had led him to his first estimate. On April 6, when the death toll had already far surpassed his earlier predictions, he again revised that figure, with the "Correction & Addendum" section declaring under the inaccurate date stamp "March 24, 2020" that the "original erroneous estimate of 5,000 dead in the US [was] a number 10 times smaller than [he had] intended to state", implying that both "500" and "5,000" had been misprints for "50,000". After several news reports about Epstein's ever-increasing estimates, on April 21 an editor's note appeared on the website that explained the latest changes as an "editing error" and clarified that Epstein's original prediction had been 500 deaths. In December 2020, when the death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. was over 333,000,
Politico named Epstein's predictions among "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year". Epstein compared COVID-19 to the
2009 H1N1 pandemic and suggested that public health measures "are done better at the level of plants, hotels, restaurants, and schools than remotely by political leaders." He argued that "the response of the state governors to the coronavirus outbreak has become far more dangerous than the disease itself", writing that the number of deaths had been exaggerated. His essays, containing a number of factual errors and misconceptions about the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, circulated in conservative circles and in the
Trump administration upon their publication. In an article published on June 6, Epstein praised
Republican-governed states like Florida for their crisis management, linking the then greater deaths in
Democratic-governed states to their "interventionist policies". ==Influence==