Liberty and the limits of the rule of law

Ronald Cass, Dean of the Boston University School of Law and chairman for the Center for the Rule of Law, gives honesty a big shot in the arm in today's Wall Street Journal.

Madoff Exploited the Jews: Networks of trust are vulnerable. No law can change that.

Law and power have limits for what they can deter, prevent, or advance. We are vulnerable to violations of trust as a function of living.

Every generation before ours has entrusted resolving such issues through law. But the limit of law is that it can only help to make marginal right after a violation has occurred. And, far too often, it can fail to right a wrong, and, as often, make two wrongs and no right.

The idea that it would be 21st century "liberals" who would look to law to resolve all violations of trust is one of the more ironic facts of the history of liberal democracy and liberal values.

How ironic for progressives that it will be conservatives who will make the most powerful arguments for the advancement of liberty in this particular stage of our democratic development, and "liberals" who argue for the reverse of liberty.

There was a day when to be liberal meant to love liberty.

Ronald Cass makes the case for why that should be today as much as when that term came to mean something near to our hearts.