We’ve been doing some philosophy of law in the PoT reading group lately, and a recent piece came up by Cass Sunstein on “The Rule of Law.” The abstract claims that “this [Sunstein’s] account of the rule of law conflicts with those offered by (among many others) Friedrich Hayek and Morton Horwitz, who conflate the idea with other, quite different ideas and practices.” This statement caught my attention because Sunstein’s account of the rule of law seems very sensible. It is in fact quite similar to the account given by our current reading group book author Lon Fuller (that’s how Sunstein’s piece came up), which also seems sensible. At the same time, I am a strong admirer of Hayek. So, if the sensible Sunstein/Fuller account of the rule of law conflicts with Hayek’s, what’s the conflict? What “different ideas and practices” does Hayek “conflate” the rule of law with? Essentially none, it turns out. Sunstein’s, Fuller’s, and Hayek’s conceptions of the rule of law are largely the same. Sunstein misunderstands Hayek’s argument that the rule of law requires economic freedom. At least, so I will argue in what follows.
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