Question: What provisions of the Constitution provide for freedom of enterprise and choice?

If you are like most people you only have a vague idea of what freedom of enterprise and choice is. So let me start with this. A person or group is free to obtain and organize resources in providing goods or services for the market of that person's or group's choice. Consumers are free to purchase these goods or services that best meet their wants or needs. Workers are free to seek and obtain any job for which they are qualified, and equally free to sever that employment.

The portions of the Constitution that support these freedoms are:

Article I, Section 9 and 10: This is the Contract Clauses with which the Constitution secured the viability of contracts. Hernando de Soto, author of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, claims that that in order to realize full economic potential, people need such basic things as titles to land and homes, the right to go into business, and the ability to borrow money and enforce contracts. All of needs for success are contingent on being able to know that contracts and agreements entered into are and will be enforceable. The Constitution recognizes and sanctions contracts. It also limits government from changing the rules that governs contracts.

Again in Article I, Section 9 and 10 we find the Export Clauses. This limits government, state and federal, from restricting the markets that can be accessed by limiting governments power to tax exports.

(Contributed by George Sweeney)

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