What do you think?
Rate this book
The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law
What is liberty, as opposed to license, and why is it so important? When people pursue happiness, peace and prosperity whilst living in society, they confront pervasive problems of knowledge, interest, and power. These problems are dealt with by ensuring the liberty of the people to pursue
their own ends, but addressing these problems also requires that liberty be structured by certain rights and procedures associated with the classical liberal conception of justice and the rule of law.
Drawing upon insights from philosophy, economics, political theory, and law, Randy Barnett examines the serious social problems that are addressed by liberty--and the background or "natural" rights and "rule of law" procedures that distinguish liberty from license. He then outlines the
constitutional framework that is needed to protect this structure of liberty. Athough this controversial new work is intended to challenge specialists, its clear and accessible prose ensure that it will be of immense value to both scholars and students working in a range of academic
disciplines.
their own ends, but addressing these problems also requires that liberty be structured by certain rights and procedures associated with the classical liberal conception of justice and the rule of law.
Drawing upon insights from philosophy, economics, political theory, and law, Randy Barnett examines the serious social problems that are addressed by liberty--and the background or "natural" rights and "rule of law" procedures that distinguish liberty from license. He then outlines the
constitutional framework that is needed to protect this structure of liberty. Athough this controversial new work is intended to challenge specialists, its clear and accessible prose ensure that it will be of immense value to both scholars and students working in a range of academic
disciplines.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 1998
19 people are currently reading
485 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 5, 2012
Contrasting liberty with license, Randy Barnett with The Structure of Liberty returns to the ideas of our founding fathers as he rebuilds the foundation of liberty represented by a constitutional framework. His method is to start by describing the problems of knowledge, interest and power. He argues that a liberty "structured by justice" and defined by rights that are supported by the rule of law is required to solve these problems. He concludes his book with a section defending against objections that have been raised to the approach toward liberty he has described.
This thorough and well-written defense of liberty should be read by anyone who has a serious interest in the foundations of liberty. With the inclusion of an extensive bibliography this is a welcome addition to the library of individual of rights.
This thorough and well-written defense of liberty should be read by anyone who has a serious interest in the foundations of liberty. With the inclusion of an extensive bibliography this is a welcome addition to the library of individual of rights.
April 11, 2018
I didn't really like the writing style so I gave this a four out of five. However, although I thought I was going to make fun of this book, I was quite pleasantly surprised by how this book turned out. Chapters 10 and 11 on their own were the shining stars of the book. I've never heard anyone use the tragedy of the commons to explain the issues that we have with the concept of security and Liberty and the fact that people are constantly put in a position to trade away Liberty for security because the tragedy of the commons prevents us from having adequate crime prevention.
January 18, 2023
The Structure of Liberty is one of the most carefully constructed and well-argued defenses of the classical liberal legal and political order. Barnett's thinking is deeply rooted in the natural law tradition but he combines this tradition, rather adroitly (if not wholly convincingly), with consequentialist considerations inspired by neoclassical and Austrian economics. The influence of the latter, and F.A. Hayek in particular, is the most apparent in the book's focus on the question of knowledge (and ignorance) as one of the main drivers for the liberal legal project. I really appreciated Barnett's efforts to ground a theory of law, in the first place, on epistemic grounds. In this, I think he succeeds, despite the cursory nature of some of his discussions on epistemology. The book passes over philosophical fundamentals rather quickly, but this is not a big problem, since framing the legal order is a matter of the application and extension of a set of basic principles that can (and have to) be taken for granted in order for the project to get off the ground at all. Perhaps the most important of his proposed set of basic (pretty plausible but not incontrovertible) axioms is a secularized and updated version of the ancient natural law claim that human behaviour and the social world are governed by CAUSAL POWERS (natural laws) that underlie, shape, and constrain our ability to design our institutions (human laws) to achieve various purposes. He goes on to discuss KNOWLEDGE, POWER, and INTEREST as the three interlinked challenges (or constraints) that any robust legal-political order must face and overcome. He claims that the classical liberal order does the best job at addressing these, although never perfectly, and always in need of interpretation and adaptation according to local and changing circumstances. Regarding adaptability, he highlights the crucial role played, in this scheme, by legal and judicial processes in facilitating (one hopes) the fair adjudication of the claims of knowledge, power, and interest. His synthesis of the common law and natural law traditions with the insights of Austrian and neoclassical economics and original legal theoretical argumentation feels refreshing.
Barnett has constructed, here, an impressive and commanding edifice that deserves to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that it has some holes in its argumentation (e.g., his controversial pluralistic claims about the supposed normative compatibility between natural law and consequentialism), and despite the fact that not all the details are equally fleshed out (e.g. the room for democratic action), there is aesthetic beauty in the way it all hangs together. And beyond beauty, the Platonic unity of the beautiful, the good, and the true (to the extent that there is such a thing) suggests that the edifice might, by the same token, be (partially) truth-tracking. As a consequentialist philosopher, although I am very skeptical towards the natural law tradition, I found Barnett's account rather exhilarating, analytical, and rigorous (although not always philosophically satisfactory or convincing). In an age of endless repetition, it is always pleasant to find authors who, while building on the old, produce something new. Every serious scholar of law and liberty, it is apparent, should study this original synthesis of classical liberal scholarship.
Barnett has constructed, here, an impressive and commanding edifice that deserves to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that it has some holes in its argumentation (e.g., his controversial pluralistic claims about the supposed normative compatibility between natural law and consequentialism), and despite the fact that not all the details are equally fleshed out (e.g. the room for democratic action), there is aesthetic beauty in the way it all hangs together. And beyond beauty, the Platonic unity of the beautiful, the good, and the true (to the extent that there is such a thing) suggests that the edifice might, by the same token, be (partially) truth-tracking. As a consequentialist philosopher, although I am very skeptical towards the natural law tradition, I found Barnett's account rather exhilarating, analytical, and rigorous (although not always philosophically satisfactory or convincing). In an age of endless repetition, it is always pleasant to find authors who, while building on the old, produce something new. Every serious scholar of law and liberty, it is apparent, should study this original synthesis of classical liberal scholarship.
December 8, 2013
Interesting Quote:
"[T]he lawyer occupies a vital middle ground between complete partiality and complete impartiality. Lawyers in a system governed by the rule of law provide a mediating buffer between the interest of the legal system to sacrifice the individual client and the interest of the individual client to sacrifice justice."
-Randy E. Barnett, the Structure of Liberty
"[T]he background rights that define justice serve also to legitimate the use of force or violence to secure compliance. THE MORE RIGHTS WE RECOGNIZE THE MORE VIOLENCE WE LEGITIMATE...Therefore, far from being unmitigated goods, RIGHTS ARE A NECESSARY EVIL. Because each right legitimates violence, the fewer we can manage with the better." (CAPS are italics)
-Randy E. Barnett, the Structure of Liberty
"[T]he lawyer occupies a vital middle ground between complete partiality and complete impartiality. Lawyers in a system governed by the rule of law provide a mediating buffer between the interest of the legal system to sacrifice the individual client and the interest of the individual client to sacrifice justice."
-Randy E. Barnett, the Structure of Liberty
"[T]he background rights that define justice serve also to legitimate the use of force or violence to secure compliance. THE MORE RIGHTS WE RECOGNIZE THE MORE VIOLENCE WE LEGITIMATE...Therefore, far from being unmitigated goods, RIGHTS ARE A NECESSARY EVIL. Because each right legitimates violence, the fewer we can manage with the better." (CAPS are italics)
-Randy E. Barnett, the Structure of Liberty
August 1, 2017
I hate to say it, but I couldn't bring myself to keep reading this book. Barnett is an extremely intelligent person and I found Restoring the Lost Constitution an engaging and useful work, but The Structure of Liberty is borderline unreadable. This isn't to say he's wrong. I couldn't point to a problem I found with his reasoning, but I was also doing a lot of heavy reading and not finding enough new information to justify the effort.
The general gist of what Barnett is saying is correct: IF you wish to have a society allowing each person the best opportunity to live their own lives, THEN you must allow a wide range of liberty to people. The standard libertarian arguments against centralization (the problem of knowledge and the abuse of power by self-interested "authorities") hold true. His notion of rights is a decent one. But really, one is better off reading Lon Fuller's The Morality of Law, Mises' Human Action, and a smattering of Rothbard and Hayek, as these authors made their points clearer than Barnett did here.
As far as I'm concerned, the libertarian/classical liberal position is unassailable "if we want a person to be able to pursue happiness while living in society with each other." But what is not addressed here, or in any classical liberal work, is how you convince people to accept that "if" especially "if" they have a personal incentive to not do so. Barnett does address some criticisms at the end and rightly says that other arrangements would not do a better job of creating a society where anyone can pursue their own happiness, but that's assuming the goal is a common one. Everything hinges on the "if." I don't believe that is the goal of most. Without that social element, without the civic virtue of wanting the fairness of society in preference to opportunities to enrich oneself/one's "side"/hurt the "bad guys" in society, then expect an emotivistic philosophy of rights to take over.
The general gist of what Barnett is saying is correct: IF you wish to have a society allowing each person the best opportunity to live their own lives, THEN you must allow a wide range of liberty to people. The standard libertarian arguments against centralization (the problem of knowledge and the abuse of power by self-interested "authorities") hold true. His notion of rights is a decent one. But really, one is better off reading Lon Fuller's The Morality of Law, Mises' Human Action, and a smattering of Rothbard and Hayek, as these authors made their points clearer than Barnett did here.
As far as I'm concerned, the libertarian/classical liberal position is unassailable "if we want a person to be able to pursue happiness while living in society with each other." But what is not addressed here, or in any classical liberal work, is how you convince people to accept that "if" especially "if" they have a personal incentive to not do so. Barnett does address some criticisms at the end and rightly says that other arrangements would not do a better job of creating a society where anyone can pursue their own happiness, but that's assuming the goal is a common one. Everything hinges on the "if." I don't believe that is the goal of most. Without that social element, without the civic virtue of wanting the fairness of society in preference to opportunities to enrich oneself/one's "side"/hurt the "bad guys" in society, then expect an emotivistic philosophy of rights to take over.
July 11, 2016
This is a great read. It explains with unrelenting logic why only a libertarian (classical liberal) society can deal with the perennial social problems of knowledge, interest and power. He does a great job of describing how things we typically see as public goods (even such things as a court system and law enforcement), could be provided better through a non-monopolistic competitive market. All this said, be warned that this is a pretty academic read. It also helps to have some prior grounding in political theory/philosophy.
August 16, 2008
I like the ideas, but I just don't like his writing style. I couldn't bring myself to finish it.
Read
September 23, 2010The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law by Randy E. Barnett (1998)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews