The limits of law

The Economist poses the conflict that most Americans must be concerned with, these days.

Law v Common Sense

"The relentless piling of law upon law—the federal register has 70,000 ever-changing pages—does not make for a more just society. When even the most trivial daily interactions are subject to detailed rules, individual judgment is stifled. When rule-makers seek to eliminate small risks, perverse consequences proliferate. Bureaucrats rip up climbing frames for fear that children may fall off and break a leg. So children stay indoors and get fat.

The direct costs of lawsuits are only one of the drawbacks of an over-legalistic society. Too many rules squeeze the joy out of life. Doctors who inflict dozens of unnecessary tests on patients to fend off lawsuits take less pride in their work. And although the legal system is supposed to be neutral, the scales are tilted in favour of whoever is in the wrong. Because the process is so expensive and juries are so unpredictable, blameless people often settle baseless claims to make them go away. The law is supposed to protect individuals from the state, but it often allows selfish individuals to harness the state’s power to settle private scores."

I am increasingly convinced that many people use the law as a weapon in on-going political and personal battles with which they will never be satisfied, no matter how little good or how much harm takes place to settle their scores.

My work is committed to the notion that much of our foolish and pitted conflict can end, with a recognition of the fallacy that ideology, religion, or any other ism or schism offers more answers than they do. And a commitment to resolution and to solving problems with a practical and empirical grounding and an honest commitment to liberty as the basis for lives of decency and goodwill.

As most classical liberal thinkers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries - John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton - argued, there are limits to the law's ability to promote the common good. And, as the Nazi and Soviet legacies attest, much bad that occurs in its name.

It is time to rethink this path to salvation.