Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page one of Georgetown University business-school professor John Hasnas’s 2024 Oxford University Press book, Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society:

Since early in my career, I have been a skeptic of the conventional approach to political philosophy, which focuses exclusively on the actions of government. Invariably, this approach traces back to the thinking of Hobbes and Locke, who view government as the necessary cure for the ills of the state of nature. This approach views the world as one in which human conduct is regulated by the conscious actions of those invested with government power or is not regulated at all. Since my first year of law school in which I encountered the impressive edifice of the common law – law that evolved without conscious human direction – I have regarded this model of the world and its corresponding conception of political philosophy as deeply flawed.