TGIF: Of Bumblebees and Competitive Courts

Considering that what liberty we continue to enjoy in the West is a product in large part of competing legal institutions operating within overlapping jurisdictions hundreds of years ago, it's curious that so many libertarians still believe such an order -- an essential feature of free-market, or natural-law, anarchism -- would be inimical to liberty. Why wouldn't that which produced liberty be up to preserving it?

"The Depoliticization of Law"

In my article "The Rule of Lore" I sought to draw attention to John Hasnas's great paper "The Myth of the Rule of Law." I now want to spotlight a later paper by Hasnas that expands on the first: "The Depoliticization of Law" (pdf). In it Hasnas makes clear that the rule of law is a myth only when the law is politicized through a monopoly lawmaker. But when law is the product of a depoliticized, competitive, and spontaneous customary and common-law system, it meets the criterion of a true rule of law; namely, it is a system in which people are subject to rules that evolve out of custom and market-based dispute resolution, rather than to the conscious will of a single person or group of legislators and politically appointed judges. Especially interesting is Hasnas's critique of consent-based law.

Highly recommended!