Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on September 28, 2019
… is from page 120 of the 2007 Definitive Edition (Bruce Caldwell, ed.) of F.A. Hayek’s classic 1944 volume, The Road to Serfdom:
The Rule of Law thus implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination. It means, not that everything is regulated by law, but, on the contrary, that the coercive power of the state can be used only in cases defined in advance by the law and in such a way that it can be foreseen how it will be used.
DBx: Although the state is the source of a great deal of legislation, and although it often codifies law, the state is not the source of law. And the state doesn’t become the source of law simply because the “law” – the legislation – that it decrees has the support of a majority of voters.
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