Hoff Off the Presses!

Professor Derek Hoff has just released one and a half books this fall: The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History (University of Chicago Press), and Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Case, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression (University Press of Kansas). The State and Stork, which examines how American economists and policymakers from Thomas Jefferson to Ronald Reagan have thought about the nation's extraordinary population growth, has landed Professor Hoff almost a dozen radio interviews on outlets ranging from the nationally syndicated Issues Today program to NPR stations in Portland and Tampa. Fighting Foreclosure, written with John Fliter in the KSU political science department, examines Minnesota's 1933 mortgage moratorium (passed during the depths of the Great Depression), the US Supreme Court's subsequent decision that the moratorium did not violate the Contract Clause of the US Constitution, and the case's enduring role in Contract Clause law. (September 27, 2012)