LiberaLaw

Is Economic Justice and Natural Law an anarchist text? I am a market anarchist: I reject the legitimacy of any entity that claims or seeks to exercise a monopoly of force in a given territory and I favor the existence of legal rules in a stateless society that would protect property rights and market exchanges. That will obvious to anyone who’s read this blog or comments I’ve made elsewhere on-line. And it will be, if anything, more obvious to anyone who’s read my forthcoming book The Conscience of an Anarchist . It may not be so clear, however, to anyone who reads Economic Justice and Natural Law . I reflected on this with a little amusement when I visited the book’s Amazon page yesterday. People who’d purchased “related items” had “also bought,” e.g. , Human Action and Ron Paul’s End the Fed . What would readers of End the Fed think of EJNL ? I suspected that a number of them would be puzzled. To be sure, EJNL is primarily about what it is reasonable for individuals to do, not a...

I dislike the state. I would much prefer doing without the violence and oppression being ruled by the state seems to involve. But it's worth asking whether this is more than a preference on my part (“Some people like chocolate, others support anarchism”). Some kinds of moral stances—for instance, those that support unqualified (Lockean? Rothbardian?) property rights—can readily dismiss all taxation as theft and thus all states as robbers. I don’t dislike this conclusion; indeed, it warms my heart whenever I’m reminded that it invalidates the kind of petty local tyranny expressed in zoning laws and eminent domain action. But my political morality is rooted in the thought of Aristotle, Aquinas, and their modern interpreters (who have tended to offer pragmatic arguments for state authority), and that means that my account of rights and duties is somewhat more complicated. That means that I can still offer a credible case against the legitimacy of state authority; but it will be qualif...

During the next two to three weeks, I will be completing work on “In Defense of the Anarchist,” which has been accepted for publication in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies . The paper is a response to Mark Murphy’s critique of moral and epistemological arguments against the authority of law; I suggest that the anarchist is on better footing than Murphy supposes. Professor Murphy has already offerd me some thoughtful, helpful observations. I am continuing to reflect on the best way to take account of these observations. But I would be very pleased, at the same time as I decide how best to respond to Professor Murphy, to hear from readers of this blog who might see ways in which the paper could be improved or who can think of arguments I would do well to address. Please let me know if you'd like to take a look. Thanks a lot to those who opt to offer comments.

This blog is called LiberaLaw because I’m a law professor, because I want to talk about issues related to law, and because I’m a liberal. Liberal can mean lots of different things. I use it to signal the fact that I’m for freedom and against subordination, exclusion, and privation. The political convictions I endorse as an idiosyncratic left-wing market anarchist place me—whether altogether accurately or not—well within the lower left quadrant of the Political Compass . But I hope people from across the spectrum will feel welcome here—left-liberals, classical liberals, libertarians, social democrats, anarchists of all stripes, Burkean and Humean conservatives, socialists, monarchists, minarchists, Marxists, paleocons, crunchy cons, and anyone else who wants to participate, and perhaps to find some unexpected common ground.