Alan O. Ebenstein - Law Quotes

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Both Hayek and Locke thought that this is best achieved by limiting government's potential actions and restricting these potential actions to known general rules applicable to all. Both sought a government of rules rather than commands, the latter of which, by their nature, are not known in advance and may be arbitrary—not applicable to all. Hayek's goal was the society of law.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Before the middle 1930s, Hayek followed Mises in adopting an a priori conception of the theory of economic activity, although Hayek said he was never an a priorist philosophically. Following Mises, however, he thought at this time that economic theory is strictly deductive from premises. Economic theory consists of laws derived from the pure logic of choice of economic actors. Economics is not an empirical science, Hayek then thought.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Government creates the market and law. Law is not the negation of liberty; it is its fulfillment. Right law is not a restriction on people's liberty; it makes their freedom possible. Right law is liberty; liberty is right law.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek did not believe that the same sort of prediction—and therefore control—that is possible in the natural sciences is attainable in the realm of society. At best, he thought, only a pattern of the future can be predicted in social life. He thought that to attempt to formulate laws of societal development akin to the laws of the physical sciences, as Marx attempted, is doomed to failure.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Where laws rule, people are free. Conversely, where not laws, but individuals, rule, people are unfree. Law is the indispensable tool for securing personal freedom, because only under the rule of law are individuals able to plan their lives according to known expectations about the social order.

Alan O. Ebenstein
His idea was essentially that societies are distinguished by their rules, morals, norms, customs, and laws. These create a stable pattern of interaction that allows individuals to lead their lives rationally.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's essential political philosophy was that liberty is the supremacy of law. To some, this may appear a paradoxical conception of liberty, for liberty is too often considered to be the absence of law. This, however, was the exact opposite of Hayek's view. He thought that liberty is not possible without law. Right law is liberty.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's move from economic theory to political philosophy was a natural evolution in his ideas. First, he considered the influence of prices in production. Then he considered the larger question of the role of prices in social life. The conclusion he reached was that law should guarantee to each person a protected sphere within which each could live as much as possible as he pleased. Later in his career, he progressed to the idea that whole societies through their customs, morals, and rules are engaged in macrocompetition, the survivor of which would possess the customs, morals, and rules that are the most materially productive and result in the highest standard of living for the most—the economist's goal.

Alan O. Ebenstein
The idea of unarticulated, nonverbal, or tacit knowledge led, in Hayek's mind, to the further idea that legal and moral institutions store, embed, and convey tacit knowledge. Hayek considered the most important of these institutional practices to be the rule of law. The rule of law allows individuals to lead rational lives.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek emphasized the importance of rules. He thought that what society should do is not to direct the individual in his or her particular actions, but to create a metaphysical structure, as it were, enforced by rules or laws, that create stable expectations and thus allow rational action.

Alan O. Ebenstein