Dr. Thomas Laehn, LP Candidate for US Senate — On Locke, Eminent Domain, and Jury Nullification

A Prosecutor Would Give Up Every Institution but One

Dr. Thomas Laehn taught constitutional law and political philosophy to undergraduates before he ever charged anyone with a crime. He is now the County Attorney for Greene County, Iowa, the first Libertarian ever elected to partisan office in that state, and a candidate for the United States Senate seat Joni Ernst is leaving open. He is also, by his own description paradoxically, a proponent of jury nullification.

This conversation closes Week 10 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776. Sunday’s article and Saturday’s history took up Algernon Sidney and John Locke, the martyr and the philosopher. Tuesday carried the argument into the present, into what a government may do about what its citizens write and say. Thursday puts a living voice on all of it, and the voice belongs to a man who taught these texts for a living and now works inside the machinery those arguments built.

Two threads run through the hour. The first is property. Laehn defends Locke’s state of nature not as history but as a model, built the way a scientist builds one, by stripping away everything that does not bear on the question being asked, and he gives Sir Robert Filmer his due along the way. The second is the question Saturday ended on and Tuesday could not close: when a government exceeds the power its people could have handed it, who decides, before force decides it? His answer is the amendment process, the ballot, and twelve people in a jury box. He says he would surrender every other institution of government before he surrendered the jury.

Then the argument comes home. Iowa’s Utilities Commission vested a private company with the power of eminent domain along the route of a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline, and families along that route have refused to sell. Laehn walks through Kelo v. City of New London, the 2005 decision that read the Fifth Amendment’s requirement of public use to mean public purpose, and through the bill he drafted at legislators’ request to stop the taking in Iowa, which passed both chambers with added language and was vetoed by the governor. The closing monologue runs the Liberty Test on the machinery underneath that fight rather than on the fight itself, states the strongest case for the taking power before answering it, and concedes what the jury cannot do before praising what it can.

This is Episode 10i of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, a twenty-two episode series tracing the intellectual origins of American liberty from ancient Greece to the Bill of Rights.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

Recorded August 17, 2026.

⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 - Introduction: The Execution of Algernon Sidney00:46 - Welcome to Week 10: The Martyr and the Philosopher02:22 - Setting the Stage: Introducing Dr. Thomas Laehn03:37 - Interview Begins: Dr. Laehn’s Background and Campaign06:03 - From Political Philosophy Professor to Rural Prosecutor10:54 - Perspectives on an Article V Convention13:11 - Dr. Laehn’s Forthcoming Book on Western Constitutionalism14:26 - John Locke, Human Dignity, and the State of Nature22:28 - Rebutting the Historical Criticisms of Locke26:22 - Modern Property Rights: The Iowa Carbon Pipeline Controversy34:18 - Eminent Domain, Kelo v. New London, and the Supreme Court40:50 - When Government Overreaches: The Right to Revolution44:21 - The Power of the Jury and Jury Nullification47:56 - Challenging the Duopoly: Running for U.S. Senate as a Libertarian53:30 - The Case for Congressional Term Limits58:16 - Where to Follow Dr. Laehn’s Campaign59:20 - Post-Interview Analysis: Locke’s Models and Filmer’s Reality01:00:48 - The Verdict: More Free or More Governed?01:03:20 - The Umpire of the Constitution and the Jury Box01:05:53 - Next Week’s Preview: The Glorious Revolution of 1688

📚 Companion article — “The Martyr and the Philosopher”: Sidney’s manuscript trial and the doctrine that to write is to act, Locke’s answer to Filmer, and the