About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

2 Jurisprudence 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/jisprud2 and id is 1 raw text is: (2011) 2(1) Jurisprudence 1-16 The Jurisprudence Annual Lecture 2010 Freedom, Coercion, Necessary Goods and the Rule of Law Raymond Plant' In this lecture I want first of all to focus on the idea of the rule of law found in many liberal social, political and legal thinkers. I believe that a critical analysis of some of the central ideas of the liberal Rechtsstaat position can in fact throw a good deal of light on issues to do with the rule of law and its relationship to some of the funda- mental building blocks of liberal political and legal thought and in particular freedom, rights andjustice. First of all, I shall give a sketch of how these elements hang together in Rechtsstaat types of ideas and I shall go on to offer what will basi- cally be an immanent or internal critique of this system of thought. I shall argue in favour of the view that the idea of the rule of law can in fact be made compatible with a welfare state-an idea which many economic liberal thinkers siuch as Havek have denied. First of all, the neo-liberal idea of the rule of law is a normative one-it is not a positivist idea of the rule of law as legalit---that is to say, of government and public authorities acting within a framework of law enacted by whatever or whoever in a par- tcular society is a legitimate soui rce of law. On the contrary, the rule of law is an ideal and, as such, it has several crucial features. These include the following: * It is independent of specific purposes. To use Michael Oakeshott's terminology, it is not telocratk-that is to say, directed to the achievement of particular ends/ goods/purposes. Rather, it is nomocratic-a framework of general rules which allow individuals to pursue freely the diverse ends which they have in a modern pluralistic society so long as in pursuing such ends they do not infringe the sim- ilar freedom of others. Thus the rule of law is justified as a set of conditions necessary for free activity: it is not to be justified in term of the achievement of a specific set of goals.I Kin's College London, Sciences Po and The House of Lords, UTK Parliament. 1 Michael Oakeshott, Lecures in the Histori of Poilial Though, T Nardin and L O'Sullivan (eds) (Imprint Academic, 2006). 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most