Abstract
In both The Constitution of Liberty1 and the later volumes of Law, Legislation and Liberty2 Friedrich Hayek employed the political history of ancient Athens to illustrate his claims about democracy and liberty. The model national constitution Hayek provided in Political Order of a Free People—the third and last volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty—has found few admirers but many critics. Attacks from the latter group seem to have largely disqualified the constitution from ongoing serious discussion or consideration. It cannot, however, be dismissed as an unimportant element of Hayek’s thought. He himself seemed to view it as the climax of what he believed would be his last major work, and describes the Political Order as“lead[ing] up to a proposal of basic alteration of the structure of democratic government” of which the constitution was an integral part.3
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Notes
Friedrich A. Hayek, The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, vol. 16, The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition, ed. Ronald Hamowy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 1, Rules and Order (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983); vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978); vol. 3, The Political Order of a Free People (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, ed. W. J. Ashley (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1909), 942; Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 332.
Norman P. Barry, Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979), 94; Hayek, Rules and Order, 92.
Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 358–59.
Chandran Kukathas, Hayek and Modern Liberalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 189.
Lord Robbins, “Hayek on Liberty,” Economica 28, no. 109 (February 1961): 66; Ronald Hamowy, “Hayek’s Conception of Freedom: A Critique,” The New Individualist Review 1, no. 1 (April 1961), http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2136/195251 (accessed on May 2, 2013); J. C. Rees, “Hayek on Liberty,” Philosophy 38, no. 146 (1963): 346–60.
Ronald Hamowy, “Law and the Liberal Society: E A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 2, no. 4 (1978): 287–97; Barry, Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy;
J. Raz, “The Rule of Law and Its Virtue,” in Liberty and the Rule of Law, ed. Robert L. Cunningham (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1979);
John N. Gray, “F. A. Hayek on Liberty and Tradition,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 4, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 119–37;
Ronald Hamowy, “The Hayekian Model of Government in an Open Society,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 6, no. 2 (1982): 137–43.
John Gray, Hayek on Liberty, 3rd edn. (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 59.
Daniel B. Klein, “Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard,” Reason Papers 27 (Fall 2004): 9–10.
Philip Hunton, A Treatise of Monarchy, ed. Ian Gardner (London: Thoemmes Press, 2000), 16.
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 2nd edn. (London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1861).
Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology (Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell, 1991), 171.
Andocides, “On the Mysteries,” in Minor Attic Orators: Antiphon, Andocides, trans. Kenneth J. Maidment and J. O. Burtt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
Hayek, Political Order, 1; Xenophon , “Hellenica,” in Xenophon in Seven Volumes, trans. Carleton Brownson, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), vii, 12–16, http://data.perseus.Org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0032.tlg001.perseus-eng1 (accessed May 2, 2013).
William C. West, “The Decrees of Demosthenes’ ‘Against Leptines’,” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 107 (1995): 237–47.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, The History of Freedom: And Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1907), 12–13.
Peter J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian “Athēnaiōn Politela” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 62–63.
Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, trans. Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1950), sec. 78 (11.2) and 132 (56.2).
Martin Ostwald, Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 156–57.
Charles Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 215.
John V. A. Fine, The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 496–98.
Christopher W. Blackwell, “Nomothesia (Legislation),” in Demos: Classical Athenian Democracy, ed. Christopher W. Blackwell, The Stoa: A Consortium for Electronic Publishing in the Humanities, 2003,http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_legislation?page=l&greekEncoding=UnicodeC (accessed May 2, 2013).
Aeschines , “Against Ctesiphon,” in Aeschines with an English Translation, trans. Charles Darwin Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 3.38, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0002%3As peech%3D3%3Asection%3D39 (accessed May 2, 2013).
Demosthenes , “Against Aristocrates,” in Demosthenes with an English Translation, trans. C. A. Vince (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 23.86, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0074%3Aspeech%3D23%3Asection%3D96 (accessed May 2, 2013).
David M. Levy, “The Statistical Basis of Athenian-American Constitutional Theory,” The Journal of Legal Studies 18, no. 1 (January 1989): 79–103.
Ibid., 81–82; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: & Discourses (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1920), 95–96.
Thucydides , History of the Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin, 1972),VI.24, 425;
P. J. Rhodes, “Sessions of Nomothetai in Fourth-Century Athens,” The Classical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2003): 125.
David L. Stockton, The Classical Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 73; Constitution of Athens 68.2–4.
Lysias , “Against Agoratus,” in Lysias with an English Translation, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 13.37, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0540.tlg013.perseus-engl (accessed May 2, 2013).
Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Principles of a Liberal Social Order,” in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 163.
Jacob Ernest Cooke, The Federalist (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 61.
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© 2013 Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy
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Martin, C.S. (2013). Hayek and the Nomothetes. In: Peart, S.J., Levy, D.M. (eds) F. A. Hayek and the Modern Economy. Jepson Studies in Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137354365_7
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