Bruno Leoni notes the strong connection between economic freedom and decentralized legal decision-making (1961)
About this Quotation:
Leoni berates economists who, in most cases, can see the benefits of decentralised, rivalrous activity in purely economic activities, but do not see that the same situation exists with legal services which, in the modern world, have been the exclusive preserve of a centralised, national, government monopoly. He slyly suggests that this is a result of the lack of historical knowledge on the part of these economists who not not realise that historically in Ancient Rome, in the free medieval cities, and in the Anglo-Saxon world such legal services have been provided in exactly this manner. A close reading of Adam Smith shows that he was aware of the fact that different courts competed for business and charged different fees for their services in his own day.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Macaulay argues that politicians are less interested in the economic value of public works to the citizens than they are in their own reputation, embezzlement and “jobs for the boys” (1830)
- 2008: James Madison on the dangers of elections resulting in overbearing majorities who respect neither justice nor individual rights, Federalist 10 (1788)
- 2008: Bruno Leoni points out that elections are seriously flawed because majority rule is incompatible with individual freedom of choice (1961)
- 2007: Thomas Gordon on standing armies as a power which is inconsistent with liberty (1722)
- 2006: J.S. Mill in The Subjection of Women argued that every form of oppression seems perfectly natural to those who live under it (1869)
- 2005: Cicero urges the Senate to apply the laws equally in order to protect the reputation of Rome and to provide justice for the victims of a corrupt magistrate (1stC BC)
- 2004: James Bryce believed that the Founders intended that the American President would be “a reduced and improved copy of the English king” (1885)
- 2004: Ludwig von Mises laments the passing of the Age of Limited Warfare and the coming of Mass Destruction in the Age of Statism and Conquest (1949)
Other quotes about Law:
- 2009: Lysander Spooner on Jury Nullification as the "palladium of liberty" against the tyranny of government (1852)
- 2009: Cesare Beccaria says that torture is cruel and barbaric and a violation of the principle that no one should be punished until proven guilty in a court of law; in other words it is the “right of power” (1764)
- 2009: Sir William Blackstone provides a strong defence of personal liberty and concludes that to “secretly hurry” a man to prison is a “dangerous engine of arbitrary government” (1753)
- 2008: John Adams predicts a glorious future for America under the new constitution and is in “reverence and awe” at its future prospects (1787)
- 2007: The IVth Amendment to the American Constitution states that the people shall be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures and that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause (1788)
- 2007: John Adams argues that the British Empire is not a “true” empire but a form of a “republic” where the rule of law operates (1763)
- 2006: The legal historian Hazeltine wrote in an essay commemorating the 700th anniversary of Magna Carta that the American colonists regarded Magna Carta as the “bulwark of their rights as Englishmen” (1917)
- 2006: John Locke on the idea that “wherever law ends, tyranny begins” (1689)
- 2006: J.S. Mill in a speech before parliament denounced the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the use of flogging in Ireland, saying that those who ordered this “deserved flogging as much as any of those who were flogged by his orders” (1866)
- 2005: Adam Smith argues that the Habeas Corpus Act is a great security against the tyranny of the king (1763)
- 2005: Cicero urges the Senate to apply the laws equally in order to protect the reputation of Rome and to provide justice for the victims of a corrupt magistrate (1stC BC)
- 2004: Bruno Leoni on the different Ways in which Needs can be satisfied, either voluntarily through the Market or coercively through the State (1963)
- 2004: Sir Edward Coke defends British Liberties and the Idea of Habeas Corpus in the Petition of Right before Parliament (1628)
30 October, 2006
 | Bruno Leoni notes the strong connection between economic freedom and decentralized legal decision-making (1961) |
In the Introduction to Freedom and the Law the great Italian legal scholar and past President of the Mont Pelerin Society, Bruno Leoni, noted the strong connection between economic freedom and decentralized legal decision-making:
Unless I am wrong, there is more than an analogy between the market economy and a judiciary or lawyers’ law, just as there is much more than an analogy between a planned economy and legislation. If one considers that the market economy was most successful both in Rome and in the Anglo-Saxon countries within the framework of, respectively, a lawyers’ and a judiciary law, the conclusion seems to be reasonable that this was not a mere coincidence.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
If we contrast the position of judges and lawyers with the position of legislators in contemporary society, we can easily realize how much more power the latter have over the citizens and how much less accurate, impartial, and reliable is their attempt, if any, to "interpret" the people’s will.
In these respects a legal system centered on legislation resembles in its turn?as we have already noticed?a centralized economy in which all the relevant decisions are made by a handful of directors, whose knowledge of the whole situation is fatally limited and whose respect, if any, for the people’s wishes is subject to that limitation.
No solemn titles, no pompous ceremonies, no enthusiasm on the part of applauding masses can conceal the crude fact that both the legislators and the directors of a centralized economy are only particular individuals like you and me, ignorant of 99 percent of what is going on around them as far as the real transactions, agreements, attitudes, feelings, and convictions of people are concerned. One of the paradoxes of our era is the continual retreat of traditional religious faith before the advance of science and technology, under the implied exigency of a cool and matter-of-fact attitude and dispassionate reasoning, accompanied by a no less continual retreat from the same attitude and reasoning in regard to legal and political questions. The mythology of our age is not religious, but political, and its chief myths seem to be "representation" of the people, on the one hand, and the charismatic pretension of political leaders to be in possession of the truth and to act accordingly, on the other.
It is also paradoxical that the very economists who support the free market at the present time do not seem to care to consider whether a free market could really last within a legal system centered on legislation. The fact is that economists are very rarely lawyers, and vice versa, and this probably explains why economic systems, on the one hand, and legal systems, on the other, are usually analyzed separately and seldom put into relation to each other. This is probably the reason why the strict relationship between the market economy and a legal system centered on judges and/or lawyers instead of on legislation is much less clearly realized than it should be, although the equally strict relationship between a planned economy and legislation is too obvious to be ignored in its turn by scholars and people at large.
Unless I am wrong, there is more than an analogy between the market economy and a judiciary or lawyers’ law, just as there is much more than an analogy between a planned economy and legislation. If one considers that the market economy was most successful both in Rome and in the Anglo-Saxon countries within the framework of, respectively, a lawyers’ and a judiciary law, the conclusion seems to be reasonable that this was not a mere coincidence.