August 20, 2006
Liberalism holds that that public law seeks to regulate behavior when self-interest does not produce the right results as measured by efficiency or fairness. Thus libertarian economists holds that, if people behave well without regulation, law is superfluous and just creates extra costs and inefficiencies. The rule of law matters
primarily to the constrain those self-interested economic agents who only care only about the utilitarian consequences of their actions.
Consequently, if one's life is not the law's business, then it also is nobody else's business. Communitarians argue that this account misses out on norms (shame, stigma, responsibility) conventions, implicit bargains that organize social expectations, regulate everyday behavior, and manage interpersonal conflicts.
|