The Law

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Sections (Content) :

• 1

...the laws, multitude of laws that contradict each other, and many which expose the best men to the severest punishments, rendering the ideas of vise and virtue vague and fluctuating and even their existence doubtful.

• 2

The generality of laws are only exclusive privileges, the tribute of all to the advantages of a few.

• 3

We have reason to dread the political refinements of ordinary men... they would frequently model their governments, not merely to prevent injustice and error, but to prevent agitation and bustle; and by the barriers they raise against the evil actions of men, would prevent them from acting at all.

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It [the law] hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness.

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The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it.

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It is because the laws prescribed to us by men are not in conformity with the laws of Nature that mankind suffers from so much ill. It is absurd to talk of human happiness so long as men are not free.

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...this concerns not the magistrate, who aims only at possibilities. He cannot cure every vise by substituting a virtue in its place. Very often he can only cure one vise by another; and in that case, he ought to prefer what is least pernicious to society.

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Without the State and its laws, we would have real freedom: without the capitalist class, we would have real equality.

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I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

• 10

The authoritarians, the rulers, either believe they hold an infallible formula, or must pretend to hold it, as they intend to lay down and impose the law. However, all history shows that the law's only use is to defend, strengthen and perpetuate the interests and prejudices prevailing at the time the law is made, thus forcing mankind to move from revolution to revolution, from violence to violence.

• 11

...governments never escape from the laws of their origin.

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...the law imposed by the State is not necessarily the natural or just law; that there exist principles of justice which are superior to these man-made laws -- principles of equality and fairness inherent in the natural order of the universe.

• 13

The ancient law giver was a benevolent myth; the modern law giver is a terrifying reality.

[Part 6: Soviet Russia, Chapter 35: Soviet Russia: An Introduction, Page 465.]

• 14

...we find ourselves unable to advance because of laws. Laws, stupid laws, worn out and obsolete, useless to humanity, in fact a powerful detrimant. Yet we say laws are the creation of men. Let us change them then to suit modern times and progress. What folly to adhere so stubbornly to old and obsolete dogmas that were a creation of a preceeding generation. We might as well object to modern railways because the stage coach was used by our grandparents.

• 15

I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may arrange that among themselves. If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in a free! What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?

Chronology :

April 09, 2020 : The Law -- Added.

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