Common Law & Natural Rights

rule of law continues to play a central role in the context of the contemporary passage: right remains effective and (precisely by means of the state of exception and police techniques) becomes procedure. This is a radical transformation that reveals the unmediated relationship between power and subjectivities,

He believed that there could be greater liberty under such an authority than in its absence: “Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all.” In a world without rules, he wrote, “nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have t

On the other hand, consider the universal status of the ethic of liberty, and of the natural right of person and property that obtains under such an ethic. For every person, at any time or place, can be covered by the basic rules: ownership of one's own self, ownership of the previously unused resources which one has occupied and transformed; and o

Ce qui offusque Hayek, c’est le fait que Wells associe le langage des droits à un programme de centralisation des décisions économiques. Le discours sur les droits ne peut selon lui coexister avec un contrôle étatique sur la production et le travail. Si des notions aussi vagues que le « bien-être commun » étaient amenées à prévaloir sur le droit d’