There is something that, I think, libertarians have learned, or should be learning, from the current American administration about the rule of law. One illustration among many was provided on March 13 when Ursula von der Leyen announced the European Union’s response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. (See “EU and Canada Retaliate after Donald Trump’s Metals Tariffs Take Effect,” Financial Times, March 12, 2025, which includes a short video of von der Leyen’s announcement.) As the president of the European Commission, the deep-state arm of the EU government, she spoke in a calm voice, emphasized that the European retaliatory tariffs were proportionate to Trump’s tariffs, and that the trade war started by the latter was “bad for business, and even worse for consumers.” The European tariffs needed to be approved within the EU and would come into force on April 13. Although the real solution for consumers would be unilateral free trade, contrast this reaction with the excited, erratic, one-man, pouting announcement on the American side. But there is more to that than one small example.
I take the rule of law to be the ideal defended by the classical liberal tradition and notably by Friedrich Hayek. It is made of “rules regulating the conduct of persons towards others, applicable to an unknown number of future instances and containing prohibitions delimiting (but of course not specifying) the boundaries of the protected domain of all persons and organized groups,” including equally government agents (see his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, p. 457 and passim). It is the ideal of a government of laws, not men.
We are re-learning that the rule of law provides an essential protection to individual liberty and thus prosperity—at least until a liberal or capitalist anarchy is attained, if this moment ever comes. The demise of the rule of law is much more likely to lead to arbitrary power, which has been the definition of tyranny in the classical liberal tradition.
This lesson is probably more important for Americans than for Europeans because the American Revolution was unusually successful and may suggest that the rule of law can easily be re-engineered if it breaks down. With few exceptions in Europe, it repeatedly broke down in recent times: in the last three-quarters of a century, many countries have been ruled by autocracies, not counting the 1789 cataclysm of the French Revolution. Each time, the rule of law was reestablished with great difficulty and arguably only in part. The establishment of the European Union was partly meant to solidify the rule of law, notwithstanding that it is often over-restrictive and over-bureaucratized. Yet, it can be argued that the EU has protected the residents of its member countries from overt forms of tyranny for several decades.
It was generally believed that the rule of law was much stronger in America than in other countries. Today, it is arguably in America that the rule of law is most threatened among the major Western countries. Many Americans don’t see this or falsely imagine that the path to tyranny closes when a strongman of their own flavor is in power. Despotism can happen here.
Even imperfect (but not a mere smokescreen of law), the rule of law is still preferable to open arbitrariness, with two qualifications. First, the rule of law should tolerate a certain measure of principled civil disobedience, but from the ruled, not from the rulers. Secondly, a revolution is justified to the extent that it is necessary to abolish a tyrannical government and replace it with the rule of law, not to replace an arbitrary regime with another.
How can the rule of law be preserved? One necessary condition has been universally recognized by the classical liberal tradition and the economic analysis of institutions: the independence and irremovability of judges. Up to some supreme court, a judicial ruling or order can be appealed, but until then, one judge can stop the wheels of the armed and powerful state. (See Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power.)
This is a crucial requirement, notwithstanding a White House deputy press secretary proclaiming that “rogue judges are subverting the will of the American people.” It’s a reasonable bet that she has never read Jean-Jacques Rosseau and does not know what she is talking about, but she gives us an idea of the atmosphere she breathes. If or when the “will of the people,” which a few of the higher-ups in the administration have also invoked against independent courts, turns against any of them, one judge could stand between him and “the people.” Historical examples are legion. If there had been independent courts, Maximilien Robespierre, a previously popular revolutionary leader against whom the mob was now clamoring, could have appealed to a judge before he was guillotined in Paris on July 28, 1794.
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“Robespierre guillotined,” by DALL-E (with numerous historical and technical incongruities)
READER COMMENTS
Jose Pablo
Mar 21 2025 at 11:41am
rogue judges are subverting the will of the American people
Which American people? The 23% of living Americans who voted for Trump?
And which will? I have many friends who voted for Trump (you have to love your people as they are). They don’t share the same views on any of the issues these so-called “rogue judges” have ruled on.
Isn’t the separation of powers part of the will of the American people? Maybe not, but how would Anna Kelly know?
“The will of the [insert nation here] people.” Now, where have I heard that before? Let me think…
Felix
Mar 23 2025 at 8:40pm
Using misleading stats like “The 23% of living Americans who voted for Trump” is how you toss your credibility in the dumpster right off the bat. The percentage that voted for second place was even lower, and most people with a brain know darn well that the percentage of voters does not include children, prisoners, the apathetic, and other non-voters.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 25 2025 at 3:06pm
Felix: My apologies, but you don’t understand. The electorate is made of all citiiens of voting age. One-third of these typically choose not to vote., Of the two-thirds of citizens of voting age, 49.8% voted for Trump, and 50,2% for somebody else. This is not a state secret, but official data published by the FEC. Consequently, a tiny bit less that one-third of the electory voted for Trump, and a tiny bit more than one-third voted for somebody else.
steve
Mar 21 2025 at 11:54am
It’s not just a Press Secretary. Trump, Vance and others have been saying that court orders can essentially be ignored. The idea seems to be that they will just claim they are appealing the court order, then go about doing what they want anyway. Given the speed at which courts work it will take months or years for courts to make final decision. So in your Robespierre case, the judge would have ordered a stay of execution and the “govt” could have appealed and then carried out the execution.
As I have noted before I am pretty skeptical about the courts anyway. Federal judges are now chosen not so much for their judicial abilities but rather for their age, younger is better, and for having the correct ideology. So we have lots of judges with poor legal chops who then make their decisions largely based upon their personal beliefs. I guess the good news is that most decisions dont actually involve politics, at least directly.
Steve
steve
Mar 21 2025 at 1:56pm
Also, you didnt note that Trump has been issuing executive orders against law firms who have represented people he doesnt like. (To be fair, he does so much stuff it’s impossible to cover it all.) As part of the price to make the EO go away Trump has demanded that firms do away with their DEI programs and in some cases demanded they do pro bono work for causes he likes. Some have caved and some others have, good for them, stood up against this tactic. I cannot conceive of any reasonable way that this comports with the first amendment.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 21 2025 at 3:22pm
Steve: Indeed, as you say, “he does so much stuff it’s impossible to cover it all.” I have well noted Trump’s fight against law firms who dare defend his enemies, and so many other things–including defying a judge’s order in order to ship to a barbaric state men many of whom had been convicted of, or charged with, no crime.
Jose Pablo
Mar 21 2025 at 3:24pm
It’s not just a Press Secretary
Deputy Press Secretary … isn’t it amazing how single-minded this administration is?
Roger McKinney
Mar 21 2025 at 1:04pm
The principle of the rule of law originally meant following God’s laws. Man made law could deviate from God’s abd be illegitimate.
Of course, we lost that concept over a century ago.
Jose Pablo
Mar 21 2025 at 1:37pm
we lost that concept over a century ago.
Thank God!
Craig
Mar 21 2025 at 2:26pm
There’s an old adage: If I let you write the law and you let me write the procedure, I’ll win every time. That’s precisely what we see in the current, seemingly perpetual state of lawfare—file a lawsuit, find a sympathetic judge willing to issue a nationwide injunction, and suddenly the matter is litigated for a decade.
You wrote, “The demise of the rule of law is much more likely to lead to arbitrary power.”Allow me to revise that? “It is precisely because the rule of law has collapsed that we now live under arbitrary power—wielded, no less, by individuals you may simply not like.”
“This lesson is perhaps more critical for Americans than for Europeans, as the American Revolution was unusually successful.”
‘Revolution’ being the operative word—it wasn’t exactly a deferential nod to “English law,” was it?
“So how is the rule of law to be preserved? A necessary condition, as universally recognized by the classical liberal tradition and the institutional economics literature, is the independence and irremovability of judges.”
And yet, therein lies the problem.
The judicial branch itself has become the bottleneck. The fatal constitutional flaw is that the federal government, taken as a whole, is granted the power to determine the scope of its own authority.
Consider Federalist 39:
“But this does not change the principle of the case. The decision [about which governing authority, federal or state] is to be impartially made, according to the rules of the constitution; and all the usual and most effectual precautions are taken to secure this impartiality. Some such tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword, and a dissolution of the compact; and that it ought to be established under the general, rather than under the local governments—or to speak more properly, that it could be safely established under the first alone—is a position not likely to be combated.”
And that may have worked—until the New Deal. When FDR threatened to pack the Court, the court caved. From that moment on, in cases like Wickard v. Filburn, the Commerce Clause, bolstered by the General Welfare clause, became a blank check. In fact, not a single federal law was struck down as exceeding the scope of the Commerce Clause until U.S. v. Lopez—in the 1990s.
So let’s revisit that notion of “independence and irremovability of judges.”
We’ve already run the experiment, and it has failed. Perhaps judicial authority should be structurally removed from the federal government altogether. I happen to believe the current regime is irredeemable—but that doesn’t mean it will vanish on its own.
As Madison wrote in Federalist 51:
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
But they didn’t. Instead of a limited government of enumerated powers within a true system of dual sovereignty, we’ve ended up with this muddled mess of “cooperative federalism”—a bureaucratic disaster that mocks the very idea of restraint.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 21 2025 at 3:43pm
Craig: You are making many good points. Anthony de Jasay would agree with you. The independence and irremovability of judges may not be a sufficient condition for preserving liberty but it is certainly a necessary condition (at least in a state-run society). And the current situation of America could still be worse. At least, there are many judges, and not a lone “stable genius.”
robc
Mar 21 2025 at 3:47pm
Madison’s veto of the Internal Improvements bill was a last ditch effort to force the government to control itself.
But it was too late, it was already lost. June 21, 1788 – March 3, 1817. It was a good run.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 21 2025 at 3:59pm
Moreover, Craig, whose laws have the judges been applying, after the first remparts of the Constitution had been undermined?
David Seltzer
Mar 21 2025 at 3:58pm
Pierre: If I may quote from your review of Justice and It’s Surroundings “I think we can encapsulate de Jasay’s complex theory of justice in a combination of a strong presumption of liberty (or, in fact, liberties), spontaneous conventions as the foundation of law, and a strong respect for private property.”
Mr. Trump’s petulant declarations: “We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector, (italics mine), and our military,” Shareholders, as owners of private property, will decide DEI policies. Does “We” mean the confederacy of individual clowns in the current administration ? More recently, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Scotus should “rein in” activist judges who are thwarting President Trump’s political agenda. To my mind, that is most threatening to rule of law. And the hits just keep on coming.
Mactoul
Mar 21 2025 at 9:16pm
Law must be founded in a grasp of what is right and what is wrong.
To ground the law in conventions is to lay down the foundation of tyranny.
Conventions can only be for minor things– conventional things where the opposite of something is equally good. Like the frequent example of traffic on the right. Traffic on the left is equally good.
But on more fundamental matters it can’t work. You must punish criminals not reward them. A convention for rewarding thiefs isn’t going to work well.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 21 2025 at 11:28pm
Mactoul: It is important to understand what “conventions” are in classical-liberal political, economic, and social theory. They have nothing to do with legal positivism, but are at the polar opposite. They go back to David Hume’s conventions and are equivalent to Hayek’s spontaneous rules of just conduct, and Adam Smith’s “rules and institutions.” This is exactly how Anthony de Jasay, who has a Humean theory of justice, uses the term (see my review of his Justice and Its Surroundings in the current issue of Regulation):
In game theory, conventions correspond to the strategies that evolve from repeated games because they are in the interests of all the players (given their self-interested interactions).
Mactoul
Mar 22 2025 at 9:11pm
So are conventions the same things as traditions (as in Burke)?
And what is the problem with the natural law?
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 25 2025 at 3:10pm
Mactoul: The answer to your first question appears to be Yes. The answer to your second is that there are many traditions of “natural law,” including Cartesian and construction ones. For the authors I have mentioned (Hume, Smith, Hayek, de Jasay…), conventions are the product of social evolution.
Jose Pablo
Mar 21 2025 at 6:20pm
It is the ideal of a government of laws, not men.
But the “idealism” of a government of laws is (must be) undoubtedly content-dependent.
After all, laws are the product of men. Merely another form of a government of men.
There is nothing “ideal” about a law that compels an individual to hand over a hiding Jew, forbids the marriage of people of different races, legalizes the ownership of another human being, or deems a person “illegal” simply for crossing an arbitrary, imaginary line in the sand. And all these laws have governed (or still govern) human lives.
The fact that 670 individuals in the U.S. (the number of district judges) have the power to disrupt the actions of a would-be tyrant is not “a government of laws”. It is, instead, just a much-improved form of “a government of men”.
From this perspective, the supposed “legal choppiness” or “roguishness” of judges is irrelevant. Entirely beside the point. What matters is that they represent an arbitrary power capable of blocking other arbitrary powers.
That 300 million individuals could possess that same power would be, without a doubt, an even greater improvement. Far better than the unattainable ideal of a government of “fair” laws, interpreted fairly by angelic judges.
Mactoul
Mar 21 2025 at 9:07pm
I see you don’t agree with Thomas More quote that Jon Murphy cited–
“This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast–man’s laws, not God’s–and if you cut them down… d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”
Jon Murphy
Mar 21 2025 at 10:32pm
Just to be clear, Thomas More never said that. It’s from a play, A Man For All Seasons, that’s a historical dramatization of More’s life.
nobody.really
Mar 24 2025 at 12:58am
Specifically, Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. And More’s admonition against “chopping down the laws” referred to ignoring laws to make it easier to punish your enemies. The statement forshadows More’s own downfall at the hands of his enemies.
Jose Pablo
Mar 22 2025 at 11:36am
In the past, we’ve benefited from cutting down some “planted” laws, standing taller as a result. Consider the repeal of Jim Crow laws or the end of anti-miscegenation laws. The contribution of a law is clearly content-dependent.
It would be naïve to think we don’t have similar laws today that we’d be better off without. Mainly, but not only, referring to, as Huemer puts it, laws “motivated simply by emotions (…); for instance, immigration restrictions and bans on gay marriage.” These serve only to indulge the pety prejudices of those sad people who seek satisfaction in curbing other individuals’ pursuit of happiness.
Nor is our history of interpreting laws any more admirable than our history of enacting them. Just look at how Article 1, Section 8, alongside Amendments 9 and 10, is currently understood. Interpretation remains a human tool, unreliable as an individual’s shield against government arbitrariness.
Thus, the rule of law is, at best, a slightly improved form of the rule of man. What truly strengthens our system is the empowerment of a broad and diverse group of individuals who can stand up and block the actions of other branches of the State. The logic behind their resistance is secondary; focusing on it is misplaced reverence for powerless words on paper.
What matters is the tradition of respecting these individual acts of defiance against tyranny. In this sense, we’d be better off with more individuals empowered to resist. In an ideal system, every citizen could challenge government actions, with policies proceeding only by unanimous consent.
Judges are a convenient — though unsatisfying — substitute for that ideal. And their reasoning is no more relevant than the rhetoric that often accompanies a presidential order.
Mactoul
Mar 22 2025 at 10:41pm
Huemer is appealing to Natural law here but in typically simplistic way. The conventions go the other way. No convention for gay marriage which was imposed by judicial fiat.
What respect for the common man and for democracy!
nobody.really
Mar 24 2025 at 1:16am
In his new book Abundance, Ezra Klein argues that our ability to challenge government actions in this manner is the reason that people in the US cannot enjoy high-speed trains, whereas people in many other democracies can. Klein likewise objects to (excessive) zoning for needlessly impeding construction.
I’d love to hear a libertarian take on this book. Libertarians typically celebrate a private citizen’s ability to object to government actions—effectively maintaining the status quo. And arguably a property owner has a property right in maintaining whatever zoning laws existed when the property was acquired. Yet even some libertarians acknowledge the merits of controlling some externalities—even regarding externalities that people did not recognize when a property was acquired. Can we likewise acknowledge that regulations impose externalities, and that the aggregation of regulations may impose such broad externalities as to justify changing the regulation that landowners had previously relied upon?
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 25 2025 at 3:22pm
Nobody: In the liberal/libertarian view, an individual right of veto does not apply to a contract or agreement between other free individuals; it applies to a coercive (non consented to) imposition by an individual or a group (including “government”) on others. If you think about it, that is the only way to conceive a system of equal liberty.
Jose Pablo
Mar 22 2025 at 4:53pm
One can only marvel at Madison’s foresight and his ability to predict, almost 250 years ago, the disastrous consequences of Trump’s tariff policies and the prosperous business of law firms.
It seems that Thomas More’s proverbial “forest of laws” (or perhaps not his) has grown far too dense for the Founding Fathers’ liking.
Federalist No. 62:
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be truly said that laws are made for the few, not for the many.
In yet another point of view, this excessive legislation has the effect of rendering the laws incoherent and mutable, which weakens their authority and confounds the understanding of the public.
Amen!
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 25 2025 at 3:26pm
Jose: That is indeed a remarkable passage in Madison.
Mactoul
Mar 21 2025 at 9:03pm
So European tariffs preserve the rule of law but American tariffs do not? Only because the later were presented in a lively manner??
There is plenty of lawlessness in American judiciary– no executive can function under the threat of judicial veto.
Detailed analysis of any matter in which these judges are issuing injunctions will show that matters are far more subtle than simplistic Trump the tyrant.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 21 2025 at 11:35pm
Mactoul: You write:
No. Because they follow rules, not the whims of a man or group of men. This concept of rules or conventions is essential.
Mactoul
Mar 22 2025 at 10:44pm
Are American tariffs unconstitutional? Why they haven’t been challenged in the courts then?
I don’t understand how the executive action that we don’t care for gets the label whim.
Mactoul
Mar 21 2025 at 9:34pm
“I think elected officials aggressively attacking judges who make aggressive rulings is a completely normal part of democratic politics in a country with a powerful judicial branch”
Ross Douthat
New York Times
steve
Mar 22 2025 at 12:14pm
Yup, they always complain about each other. That’s normal. Threatening to impeach is not. Threatening to ignore court orders, and actually ignoring them, is not. Lots of executive have appealed court rulings they were unhappy with. A lot of times the executive win, so it’s clear that POTUS is well able to function within the scope of court decisions. It just means that POTUS cannot act without any limits as a king and ignore our laws.
Steve
Jose Pablo
Mar 22 2025 at 2:34pm
It just means that POTUS cannot act without any limits as a king and ignore our laws.
Why not? Or else what? Are we going to lash the executive with the sharp whip of our contempt?
I’m sure the President will be deeply shaken by the liberal (in the classical sense) soundness of our constitutional concerns. After all, he’s certainly not one to dismiss the significance of a well-reasoned argument.
Unfortunately, the answer might be: “Yes, the President can”. Remember, “He who saves his country violates no law.” And our country is being invaded. Let’s not forget that either.
There’s little we can do. The President commands an extraordinary number of armed men.
Mactoul
Mar 23 2025 at 7:21am
This comment one who saves the country needs to be interpreted in light of Schmitt’s state of exception. The executive is charged with determining if this state of exception should exist in which normal laws are suspended.
nobody.really
Mar 24 2025 at 12:49am
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John B. Colvin (September 20, 1810)
Nietzsche
Jon Murphy
Mar 22 2025 at 12:34pm
Agreed with Steve. Let’s stop these euphemisms.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 22 2025 at 9:34pm
Jon and Steve: I also concur.
Monte
Mar 22 2025 at 7:59pm
The liberal arm of the federal judiciary isn’t just exercising a neutral check on Trump’s executive power. Whatever their practical effect, the intent behind all of these legal interventions is to block, delay, and undermine the Trump agenda. But for those basking in the sun of this judicial activism, remember that it will continue to be used to undermine the EA of all future presidents.
To this, some might say “Hallelujah!” However, it begs the question (posed, in part, by Justice Alito): Does a single district-court judge who lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to comply with an injunction that, in effect, impedes the actions of the entire executive branch?
In spite of the background applause, we might very well be setting a dangerous precedent of a different kind here.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 22 2025 at 9:29pm
Monte: I understand that what you seem to wish for has long been a major problem in nearly all European countries: challenging the government had to be done before special constitutional courts. In America as (at until relatively recently) in the UK, any judge could stop power.
Monte
Mar 22 2025 at 10:45pm
The primary difference being that judicial review in the UK and other European countries takes place in specialized constitutional courts that are less politicized and that restrict themselves to interpreting and adjudicating the constitutionality of executive actions. District judges here in the U.S. have a disproportionate amount of power that allows them circumscribe national policy that falls within the scope of authority granted to the president by the constitution.
steve
Mar 22 2025 at 11:59pm
What limits the executive branch from interpreting the constitution as meaning they can do whatever they want? I would hope you arent making the argument that the president is always right because he is the president. What or who checks the power of the executive? If you are happy because your team is in power and you are happy to let them do whatever they want since you agree with them, what happens when the next guy is in office? What is the difference between a President for whom no one can limit what they do vs a king?
Steve
Monte
Mar 23 2025 at 2:07am
Come on. I’m not arguing that a president reserves the exclusive right to interpret the constitution. All three branches of government are necessary to maintain the balance of power. But it seems obvious to me, anyway, that the growing frequency and scope of these injunctions are politically motivated and constitute a clear case of judicial overreach.
Monte
Mar 23 2025 at 2:24am
Elie Honig (former federal prosecutor and no friend to Trump) recently wrote a piece for Intelligencer entitled Are Federal Judges Waging an Anti-Trump Resistance? His concluding remarks:
steve
Mar 23 2025 at 12:35pm
It seems obvious to me that you weren’t especially concerned about this before Trump was POTUS. I agree that in the past it wasn’t that unusual for lawyers to find a sympathetic judge to whom they would take their case. That judge in Texas has been popular for conservatives and liberals have their favorites. However, those judges dont make final decisions and it goes up the appeals chain. That means the judge can put a hold on the actions of the executive. In reality, given the state of our Congress, that is the only even remotely timely limit that can be placed upon the powers of the executive branch. Can you think of any? Trump wants to eliminate that limit. That would mean that even if he did something blatantly illegal it would have to work its way up the courts, taking months to years to resolve.
It’s also notable the many of the judges ruling against Trump were appointed by Republican presidents so this is not just a case of partisanship.
Steve
Monte
Mar 23 2025 at 2:34pm
You assume incorrectly that I wasn’t concerned about it. The sheer number of injunctions against Trump vs other presidents, though, has been unprecedented. I wouldn’t say many, but some of the judges ruling against him were appointed by Republican presidents. The majority, however, are democratically appointed judges, which smacks of partisanship. Both cons and libs have resorted to judge-shopping (prior to and after appointments), which you’ve actually alluded to in previous posts.
Felix
Mar 23 2025 at 8:52pm
I have a quite contrarian view, that while the ideal of Rule of Law is better than the reality of Rule of Men, the Rule of Law does not and can not exist as long as laws are interpreted by Men. Appeals courts which split 2-1 then 7-8, followed by a 5-4 Supreme Court split, are the first line of evidence. Second is that the only real practical different between King’s Men in black robes and King’s Men in shining armor is the speed with which decisions are made; both still are unpredictable and finish in uncertainty as to when the next King’s Men or King himself will change interpretations.
There’s something especially pernicious about juries having to decide unanimously in a short time without any appreciable outside help, yet appeals court judges take years to debate with each other, assisted by the brightest law clerks, the finest law libraries, and innumerable briefs by friends of the court who are no such thing but only wish to reframe the problem in their own terms.
And somehow defendants were supposed to be able to predict the final conclusion years before.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 25 2025 at 3:39pm
Felix (and Monte): All these issues are well discussed in Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty–admittedly not an easy reading, but worth it.
Comments are closed.