Social Contract

March 19, 2017|Bitcoin, Currency, miners, money, order without law, Robert Ellickson, Social Contract

Bitcoin’s Creation of Order without Law

Modern fiat currencies depend for their value on confidence in the laws of the states that issue them. Some nations, like the United States with its established central bank, inspire substantial confidence relative to nations that may debase for their currency for political objectives. But no nation can absolutely insulate its currency from political manipulation.

That is what gives Bitcoin the opportunity to succeed as a currency. But what gives users confidence in Bitcoin? It is precisely the fact that the rules regulating its currency do not depend on the currency law of any nation state. Bitcoin provides an example of order without law or at least without currency law.

Order without law is not unknown to society. Social norms often regulate behavior without the benefit of formal law. Rules of etiquette tell people how to behave at table without causing offense. Coordination rules help people walk down the street without bumping into one another. In a major work, Robert Ellickson showed that social norms, not law, governed responsibility in a community of cattle ranchers and farmers for the damage caused by cattle straying on the range.

But while order without law is possible without software, software can improve on the enforcement of that order. The beauty of Bitcoin’s design is that its mechanism for enforcement can not only be more powerful than the informal mechanisms that enforce social norms but even more powerful in some respects than the formal mechanisms of law.

January 27, 2016|Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, John Rawls, Public Choice, Social Contract, Thomas Hobbes, Voting

Citizen or Consumer? Michael Munger Responds

by Michael C. Munger|

When it comes to voting by citizens in a democracy, there are four essential questions, as I see it, in marrying up the “should” and the “is.”

January 6, 2016|

Classical Liberalism: Teaching Its Own Undoing

by Marc DeGirolami|

In response to: Freedom of Association and Antidiscrimination Law: An Imperfect Reconciliation

Professor Richard Epstein has performed a welcome service in reminding us of the classical liberal case for the freedom of association. The classical liberal champions the primacy of rights as guarantors of the individual’s sovereignty to make free dealings with other sovereigns. He values rights as safeguards of the freedom to make moral and economic choices, to unite with others of like mind, and promptly to divest when the benefits of union are no longer perceived. He distrusts rights as claims for the imposition of obligations that override others’ sovereignty, reserving such mandates for special cases—force and fraud, as well…

Richard Epstein’s Imperfect Understanding of Antidiscrimination Law

by Andrew Koppelman

Richard Epstein is right about how to think about antidiscrimination law. The general principle governing transactions between private parties should be freedom of association, for reasons of both liberty and efficiency. Any departure from that rule, such as a prohibition of discrimination, has the burden of proof. Epstein, however, can’t let go of that general rule…

Government Intervention Springs Eternal for Antidiscrimination Laws

by Paul Moreno

In his Liberty Forum essay, Professor Richard Epstein makes a persuasive case that antidiscrimination laws are “a great mistake outside of monopolies.” But advocates of “antidiscrimination” laws have a view of monopoly—or of “coercion” and “force”—that is much more expansive than Professor Epstein’s. The Progressive or modern liberal advocates of antidiscrimination laws advance a concept…

How Classical Liberal Principles Address Cultural, Social, and Economic Issues: Richard Epstein’s Reply

by Richard Epstein

My Liberty Forum essay, Freedom of Association and Antidiscrimination Law: An Imperfect Reconciliation has provoked three thoughtful responses. Those by Marc DeGirolami and Paul Moreno are supportive of my approach and may be best described as intramural disputes among individuals who agree on the relationship between freedom of association and basic antidiscrimination laws. Andrew Koppelman’s…

December 30, 2013|Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Liberty, Natural Rights, Prescription, Progressivism, Social Contract, Thomas Paine, Welfare State

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

by Yuval Levin|

This edition of Liberty Law Talk is with Yuval Levin, author of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. A 2013 Bradley Prize recipient, Levin connects us with the actual contest between Burke and Paine as they debated the central claims of the French Revolution and much of modern political thought with its focus on rights, individualism, the social contract vs. Burke's more expansive notions of social liberty, the contract among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born, and his belief in prescription or the notion that change should be…

December 23, 2013|Christian Humanism, Edmund Burke, French Revolution, John Calvin, Jonathan Swift, Martin Luther, Samuel Johnson, Social Contract

Edmund Burke’s Perennial Liberty

by H. Lee Cheek, Jr.|

Books reviewed in this essay:

The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, by Corey Robin. Oxford University Press.

The Common Mind: Politics, Society and Christian Humanism from Thomas More to Russell Kirk, by André Gushurst-Moore. Angelico Press.

The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future—and Why They Should Give It Back, by David Willetts. Atlantic Books.

Amidst the recurring question of whether Edmund Burke is relevant to contemporary politics, we are presented with three volumes that approach this vital issue in different ways, and with varying levels of scholarly and popular perceptiveness. All the books under review attempt to connect the witness and insights of the great statesman to ongoing conflicts in society and politics. Perhaps the disparate assessments of Burke alone could suggest the resiliency of his legacy; however, the importance of Burke the political theorist dictates a closer examination of these critical works.

August 8, 2013|Declaration of Independence, Greg Weiner, Harry Jaffa, Limited Government, Mary Ann Glendon, Natural Rights, rights, Social Contract, Thomas G. West

The Real America

by Ken Masugi|

Thanks to Greg Weiner (and the commenters) for taking on my original piece, which has gathered far more attention than I had anticipated. Greg argues that, “It has become commonplace to see the Declaration as a radical break with this tradition—and, in some circles, the Constitution as a radical break again—but a continuum of this symbol is clearly traceable.” Yet, though there is some “traceable” continuity, the Declaration is of a different order.

July 1, 2013|

The Conservative Mind at 60: Russell Kirk’s Unwritten Constitutionalism

by Gerald Russello|

In his great work, The American Republic, written in 1866, the American Catholic political writer Orestes Brownson – who ranks with Calhoun and John Adams as among the finest political minds America has produced, and who still remains somewhat neglected – wrote this about the nation’s political order. The constitution of the United States is twofold, written and unwritten, the constitution of the people and the constitution of the government. The written constitution is simply a law ordained by the nation or people instituting and organizing the government; the unwritten constitution is the real or actual constitution of the people as a…

Reason and the Unfounded Constitution

by James Matthew Wilson

In Gerald Russello’s account of Russell Kirk’s Constitutional theory, he conscisely outlines Kirk’s thought on that central concern for conservatives and indeed for all Americans. As Kirk understood, the Constitution is a great Fact of American experience, whose importance cannot be overlooked; and yet, as any historian could tell us, the trouble with facts is…

Natural Law, Natural Rights, and the Law of Freedom

by Bradley J. Birzer

It is a great honor to be asked to comment on Gerald Russello’s excellent piece. A man whose scholarship and wisdom is as high as his integrity is deep, Russello has pioneered much in his own writing and editing and in his profound grasp of the law. Almost every topic I’ve explored academically has proudly…

Russell Kirk’s Founders and the Unwritten Constitution

by Gary L. Gregg II

2013 is the 60th year since Regnery Publishing brought Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind to the reading public. The book helped transform modern American politics and inform many emerging conservative minds. When I was interning in Washington, DC more than twenty years ago, I remember answering a question by saying that I had a skeletal…

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.