The Law

Print
A
A
Home | Mises Library | The Law

The Law

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

Tags Legal SystemPhilosophy and MethodologyPolitical TheoryPrivate Property

10/09/2008Claude Frédéric Bastiat

Bastiat's​ timeless essay applies whenever and wherever the state assumes unto itself different rules and different laws from that by which it expects other people to live.

The question that Bastiat deals with: how to tell when a law is unjust or when the law maker has become a source of law breaking? When the law becomes a means of plunder it has lost its character of genuine law. When the law enforcer is permitted to do with others’ lives and property what would be illegal if the citizens did them, the law becomes perverted.

Narrated by Floy Lilley.

This audio essay is also available on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and via RSS.​

Author:

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

Frédéric Bastiat was the great French proto-Austrolibertarian whose polemics and analytics run circles around every statist cliché. His primary desire as a writer was to reach people in the most practical way with the message of the moral and material urgency of freedom.