Law, legislation, and liberty : a new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy

Bibliographic Information

Law, legislation, and liberty : a new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy

[F.A. Hayek] ; edited by Jeremy Shearmur

(The collected works of Friedrich August Hayek, v. 19)

University of Chicago Press, 2021

  • : pbk

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Contents of Works

  • v. 1. Rules and order
  • v. 2. The mirage of social justice
  • v. 3. The political order of a free people

Description and Table of Contents

Description

A new edition of F. A. Hayek’s three-part opus Law, Legislation, and Liberty, collated in a single volume In this critical entry in the University of Chicago’s Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, political philosopher Jeremy Shearmur collates Hayek’s three-part study of law and liberty and places Hayek’s writings in careful historical context. Incisive and unrestrained, Law, Legislation, and Liberty is Hayek at his late-life best, making it essential reading for understanding the philosopher’s politics and worldview.  These three volumes constitute a scaling up of the framework offered in Hayek’s famed The Road to Serfdom. Volume 1, Rules and Order, espouses the virtues of classical liberalism; Volume 2, The Mirage of Social Justice, examines the societal forces that undermine liberalism and, with it, liberalism’s capacity to induce “spontaneous order”; and Volume 3, The Political Order of a Free People, proposes alternatives and interventions against emerging anti-liberal movements, including a rule of law that resides in stasis with personal freedom.  Shearmur’s treatment of this challenging work—including an immersive new introduction, a conversion of Hayek’s copious endnotes to footnotes, corrections to Hayek’s references and quotations, and the provision of translations to material that Hayek cited only in languages other than English—lends it new importance and accessibility. Rendered anew for the next generations of scholars, this revision of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty is sure to become the standard.

Table of Contents

Editorial Preface Editor’s Introduction Law, Legislation, and Liberty Consolidated Preface to the One-Volume Edition Volume 1    Rules and Order Introduction 1          Reason and Evolution Construction and evolution The tenets of Cartesian rationalism The permanent limitations of our factual knowledge Factual knowledge and science The concurrent evolution of mind and society: the role of rules The false dichotomy of ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ The rise of the evolutionary approach The persistence of constructivism in current thought Our anthropomorphic language Reason and abstraction Why the extreme forms of constructivist rationalism regularly lead to a revolt against reason   2          Cosmos and Taxis The concept of order The two sources of order The distinguishing properties of spontaneous orders Spontaneous orders in nature In society, reliance on spontaneous order both extends and limits our powers of control Spontaneous orders result from their elements obeying certain rules of conduct The spontaneous order of society is made up of individuals and organizations The rules of spontaneous order and the rules of organization The terms ‘organism’ and ‘organization’   3          Principles and Expediency Individual aims and collective benefits Freedom can be preserved only by following principles and is destroyed by following expediency The ‘necessities’ of policy are generally the consequences of earlier measures The danger of attaching greater importance to the predictable rather than to the merely possible consequences of our actions Spurious realism and the courage required to consider utopia The role of the lawyer in political evolution The modern development of law has been guided largely by false economics   4          The Changing Concept of Law Law is older than legislation The lessons of ethology and cultural anthropology The process of articulation of practices Factual and normative rules Early law The classical and the medieval tradition The distinctive attributes of law arising from custom and precedent Why grown law requires correction by legislation The origin of legislative bodies Allegiance and sovereignty   5          Nomos: The Law of Liberty The functions of the judge How the task of the judge differs from that of the head of an organization The aim of jurisdiction is the maintenance of an ongoing order of actions ‘Actions towards others’ and the protection of expectations In a dynamic order of actions only some expectations can be protected The maximal coincidence of expectations is achieved by the delimitation of protected domains The general problem of the effects of values on facts The ‘purpose’ of law The articulation of the law and the predictability of judicial decisions The function of the judge is confined to a spontaneous order Conclusions   6          Thesis: The Law of Legislation Legislation originates from the necessity of establishing rules of organization Law and statute: the enforcement of law and the execution of commands Legislation and the theory of the separation of powers The governmental functions of representative assemblies Private law and public law Constitutional law Financial legislation Administrative law and the police power The ‘measures’ of policy The transformation of private law into public law by ‘social’ legislation The mental bias of a legislature preoccupied with government   Volume 2    The Mirage of Social Justice 7          General Welfare and Particular Purposes In a free society the general good consists principally in the facilitation of the pursuit of unknown individual purposes The general interest and collective goods Rules and ignorance The significance of abstract rules as guides in a world in which most of the particulars are unknown Will and opinion, ends and values, commands and rules and other terminological issues Abstract rules operate as ultimate values because they serve unknown particular ends The constructivist fallacy of utilitarianism All valid criticism or improvement of rules of conduct must proceed within a given system of such rules ‘Generalization’ and the test of universalizability To perform their functions rules must be applied through the long run 8          The Quest for Justice Justice is an attribute of human conduct Justice and the law Rules of just conduct are generally prohibitions of unjust conduct Not only the rules of just conduct, but also the test of their justice, are negative The significance of the negative character of the test of injustice The ideology of legal positivism The ‘pure theory of law’ Law and morals The ‘law of nature’ Law and sovereignty   9          ‘Social’ or Distributive Justice The concept of ‘social justice’ The conquest of public imagination by ‘social justice’ The inapplicability of the concept of justice to the results of a spontaneous process The rationale of the economic game in which only the conduct of the players but not the result can be just The alleged necessity of a belief in the justice of rewards There is no ‘value to society’ The meaning of ‘social’ ‘Social justice’ and equality ‘Equality of opportunity’ ‘Social justice’ and freedom under the law The spatial range of ‘social justice’ Claims for compensation for distasteful jobs The resentment of the loss of accustomed positions Conclusions Appendix to Chapter Nine           Justice and Individual Rights   10        The Market Order or Catallaxy The nature of the market order A free society is a pluralistic society without a common hierarchy of particular ends Though not a single economy, the Great Society is still held together mainly by what are vulgarly called economic relations The aim of policy in a society of free men cannot be a maximum of foreknown results but only an abstract order The game of catallaxy In judging the adaptations to changed circumstances comparisons of the new with the former position are irrelevant Rules of just conduct protect only material domains and not market values The correspondence of expectations is brought about by a disappointment of some expectations Abstract rules of just conduct can determine only chances and not particular results Specific commands (‘interference’) in a catallaxy create disorder and can never be just The aim of law should be to improve equally the chances of all The Good Society is one in which the chances of anyone selected at random are likely to be as great as possible   11        The Discipline of Abstract Rules and the Emotions of the Tribal Society The pursuit of unattainable goals may prevent the achievement of the possible The causes of the revival of the organizational thinking of the tribe The immoral consequences of morally inspired efforts In the Great Society ‘social justice’ becomes a disruptive force From the care of the most unfortunate to the protection of vested interests Attempts to ‘correct’ the order of the market lead to its destruction The revolt against the discipline of abstract rules The morals of the open and of the closed society The old conflict between loyalty and justice The small group in the Open Society The importance of voluntary associations   Volume 3    The Political Order of a Free People 12        Majority Opinion and Contemporary Democracy The progressive disillusionment about democracy Unlimited power the fatal defect of the prevailing form of democracy The true content of the democratic ideal The weakness of an elective assembly with unlimited powers Coalitions of organized interests and the apparatus of para-government Agreement on general rules and on particular measures   13        The Division of Democratic Powers The loss of the original conception of the functions of a legislature Existing representative institutions have been shaped by the needs of government, not of legislation Bodies with powers of specific direction are unsuited for law-making The character of existing ‘legislatures’ determined by their governmental tasks Party legislation leads to the decay of democratic society The constructivistic superstition of sovereignty The requisite division of the powers of representative assemblies Democracy or demarchy?   14        The Public Sector and the Private Sector The double task of government Collective goods The delimitation of the public sector The independent sector Taxation and the size of the public sector Security Government monopoly of services Information and education Other critical issues   15        Government Policy and the Market The advantages of competition do not depend on it being ‘perfect’ Competition as a discovery procedure If the factual requirements of ‘perfect’ competition are absent, it is not possible to make firms act ‘as if’ it existed The achievements of the free market Competition and rationality Size, concentration and power The political aspects of economic power When monopoly becomes harmful The problem of anti-monopoly legislation Not individual but group selfishness is the chief threat The consequences of a political determination of the incomes of the different groups Organizable and non-organizable interests   16        The Miscarriage of the Democratic Ideal: A Recapitulation The miscarriage of the democratic ideal A ‘bargaining’ democracy The playball of group interests Laws versus directions Laws and arbitrary government From unequal treatment to arbitrariness Separation of powers to prevent unlimited government   17        A Model Constitution The wrong turn taken by the development of representative institutions The value of a model of an ideal constitution The basic principles The two representative bodies with distinctive functions Further observations on representation by age groups The governmental assembly The constitutional court The general structure of authority Emergency powers The division of financial powers   18        The Containment of Power and the Dethronement of Politics Limited and unlimited power Peace, freedom and justice: the three great negatives Centralization and decentralization The rule of the majority versus the rule of laws approved by the majority Moral confusion and the decay of language Democratic procedure and egalitarian objectives ‘State’ and ‘society’ A game according to rules can never know justice of treatment The para-government of organized interests and the hypertrophy of government Unlimited democracy and centralization The devolution of internal policy to local government The abolition of the government monopoly of services The dethronement of politics   Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values The errors of sociobiology The process of cultural evolution The evolution of self-maintaining complex systems The stratification of rules of conduct Customary rules and economic order The discipline of freedom The re-emergence of suppressed primordial instincts Evolution, tradition and progress The construction of new morals to serve old instincts: Marx The destruction of indispensable values by scientific error: Freud The tables turned   Author Index Subject Index  

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