And the I'm John Bachelor. This is the new John Bachelor show on CBS Audio Network.

I welcome my colleague and friend Professor Richard Epstein.

He teaches law at the University of Chicago and NYU.

He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution where he writes on defining ideas,

a revelation of Richard in his youth.

That is right.

We're going to get into a time machine with Richard

and go to the spring of 1963, Columbia College.

JFK's in the White House.

The world has not changed with the assassination.

Lyndon Johnson is an afterthought. Civil rights is all a flame across America.

Richard is in a class taught by Hal Chase, Professor Hal Chase, who's a parapetetic professor.

He's a war hero.

Richard doesn't know that at the time, but he's twice wounded on Iwodima.

He will die at 60 of a heart attack, but right now he's in

the bloom teaching Richard about a law, a part of law that involves Justice Brennan. This is about something that

Richard's written about his whole life, takings, the idea that government does not

have the right to take to possess private property that a man's home is not only his castle

trespasses a serious transgression in English common law.

Professor, take us to the spring of 1963 what you heard that day that changed your life.

Good evening to you.

Okay, well, what happened is how Chase taught a course in the Supreme Court and it wasn't about taking

...