Legal System

There is one small, seemingly insignificant detail that destroys the case against litter and the litterer.

"In the market, the decision of whether and how much litter to allow is based ultimately on the wishes and desires of the consumers!"

In that way, the possessors of a liberal or pacifist conscience can go about their business assured that they could never be a party to capital punishment; while the rest of us can have the capital punishment we would like to have, free from the interference of liberal busybodies.

And yet every day, young people are finding ways around these preposterous restrictions that are hardly ever questioned, imbibing with their booze a disdain for the law and a creative spirit of criminality, along with a disposition to binge drink when their legal workarounds succeed.

A proper solution to the taxicab crisis is not to co-opt the movement of gypsy cab drivers by the offer to take them into the system, but rather to

Sadly, the Federal Minimum Wage Act of 2007 and the proposed Free of Fees for Carry-On Act are but two of a myriad of examples of how legislators exploit private business in the name of protecting their constituents.

Who then will bear witness in court? Whoever wishes to do so, freely and voluntarily.

"His widely published 'Letter to Washington' described the party of Hamilton as 'disguised traitors' who were 'rushing as fast as they could venture, without awakening the jealousy of America, into all the vices and corruptions of the British Government'."

Bruno Leoni (1913–1967), an Italian classical-liberal political philosopher and attorney, was a professor at the University of Pavia, president of the Mont Pèlerin Society, and author of Freedom and the Law, expanded 3d ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991 [1961]). This paper was originally published in English, under the same title in Il Politico 31, no. 3 (1966), pp. 535–38, and has been only lightly edited for publication here. Carlo Lottieri, editor of the recently published Bruno Leoni book Law, Liberty, and the Competitive Market, Gian Turci & Anne MacDiarmid, trans. (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009), assisted with providing this piece and obtaining necessary permissions.]

"When something becomes illegal, consumer demand does not vanish."