Fall

08
14

Summer

Empowering Government
Through Rule of Law
Compiled by: Alex Letzo
The purpose of this essay is to build a framework of empowering
governance, primarily based on Hayeks The Constitution of Liberty. The
futuristic goal is to later superimpose this thinking, with that of previous
works on limiting government, in order to contrast whether the
democratic means employed by the United States political philosophies
are capable of achieving the ends sought in the constitution; where we
are primarily concerned with the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.

Constitutional Political Economy Essay #2

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It has been explained that governance can be limited through a constitution

conjoined with democracy that is limited by a minarchist philosophy. This system is
reliant on the coordinated want of the people to have a limited governance in order to
achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The question remains though, after the
establishment of a constitution, which severely limits the size of the government in order
to grant its citizens freedom, how do we protect individuals freedom from the will of
others? This question is answered through a second stage of national development, which
establishes a governing rule of law that is guided by the constitution. However, one must
now take into account that establishing a rule of law can severely off-balance the power
limits imposed on the government by providing additional power in the form of coercion
to conform to the rule of law. Additionally, we must relax the embedded assumption that
the coordination of the people is to seek a limited government. This relaxation of limited
government is based on the belief that, with democracy, comes change in the wants of the
majority as the development of the nation and civilization advance. So there must also
exist some doctrine, practiced within the governance, which allows for a wanting to limit
the newly vested powers of the government, other than the system of checks and
balances, which has a bias to increase the power of the government as a whole.
After establishing a constitution that embodies limited government through a
coordinated want of the people, we must consider that a degree of ultimate freedom has
been granted to every individual. Until now, a self-enforced want that was coordinated by
the people allowed for the creation of a constitution that established a limited form of
governance without the need of authoritative power. This self-enforcement is only aimed
at the limiting of governance and upholding the peoples freedom from coercion by an
external source. This self-enforcement does little in attempting to protect individuals
freedom from the will of other citizens, which is vital for the advancement of the
civilization. Without the freedom of coercion from other individuals, learning cannot take
place due to a created absence of differing ends that are essential for the advance of
civilization. This advance is due to differing ends allowing for new ways and means of
performing actions that dont necessarily have to be better than commonly practiced
methodology because learning, or knowledge creation, can occur even if we fail, but will
never occur if we do nothing to improve. This concept, classified by Friedrich A. Hayek,

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in The Knowledge Problem, where no individual knows what is best for society and the
only way for advancement to occur is through many individuals diffused attempts at
varying ends, which merge into a general system of knowledge creation. So a need for
freedom and liberty flourished from the necessity of advancing the knowledge of man
through the advancement of civilization. It is the state of civilization at any given
moment that determines the scope and the possibilities of human ends and values. The
mind can never foresee its own advance. (Hayek, P.24) So therefore, there exist a need
to implement a rule of law parallel to the constitution, which would allow for states to
protect the free action of individuals, while still maintaining a limit on the coercive power
of the state.
Further questions arise on how should we implement a rule of law, whether
through a democratic process of checks and balances, or by establishing an anarchocapitalist society where rule of law is privately enforced? We can further arrange the
argument as a question of which system is even capable of achieving the end sought by
means of rule of law? The end sought is considered to be the individual freedom of
coercion from the will of other citizens. Attempting to establish a privately enforced rule
of law in an anarcho-capitalist society would create a system that has a bias to grant itself
more power than necessary. Essentially, there would exist a private group of individuals
enforcing the power to coerce other individuals to follow the rule of law that they
themselves are supposed to adhere to. In matters where this private group of individuals
are directly involved with the coercion of other individuals, such as to obtain property
rights for the group, who is to be the higher authority that will be able to use the power of
coercion against these private groups in order to keep them in check? The assumed
anarcho-capitalist answer is that other private enforcement groups would compete for the
position of enforcement if the will of one group were corrupted. I see this process turning
into a large issue involving biases and alliances, where the faith in the rule of law
amongst the normal citizen is lost and anarchy ensues. This is where I consider anarchocapitalism to fail at enforcing the rule of law and thus not actually achieving the end
sought by the people. Now considering the case of democracy, rule of law is enforced by
a system of checks and balances, where the rule of law can also officially be updated and
advanced as the wants and needs of the majority of the population change. Without such a

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process, I see no way for civilization to advance, but one must also keep in mind that
with new powers granted to the limited government of democracy, there also exists the
need for new forms of limitation.
Similar to the self-enforcement philosophy considering the coordination of the
people on a constitution that limits government; we also have the doctrine of liberalism.
Described by Friedrich A. Hayek, Liberalism is concerned mainly with limiting the
coercive powers of all government, whether democratic or not. (Hayek, P.103)
Combined with the self-enforcement aspects of the constitution, we have a doctrine that
is able to provide a check and balance with democracy itself. Thus with the concepts of
democracy and majority rules, we can utilize liberalism to help embody the ultimate end
of limited government, regardless of short-term changes in the scope of government
made by democracy. Without such a system, Hayek believed that policy makers would
attempt to increase the range of their power by addressing questions, which the
government had no power vested by the constitution to address. The same can be said
about an anarcho-capitalist society because one must consider what force keeps the
anarcho-capitalist on the right track for its ultimate end of limited government coercion
on the people. Markets are effective in relaying signals but cannot establish long-term
aims as well as short-term changes in societal structure. One can successfully apply the
concept of liberalism to anarcho-capitalism, however I see the peaceful implementation
of corrective practices being difficult to achieve due to the lacking of a sound system of
checks and balances. To this day, democracy is the only form of government where
peaceful resolve of conflict and change of power can occur. So when we conjoin
democracy with the liberalist doctrine, it allows for us to make the necessary adjustments
in the rule of law as society advances, while maintaining the long-term aim of limiting
the coercion of all government.
In conclusion, we can see how rule of law, dependent upon democracy and
liberalism, is an essential tool used to empower the government of a nation. Without this
rule of law, limited by the constitution, individuals would be free to coerce other
individuals to do their bidding simply through monopolistic or violent methods. It is also
important that the form of government be a democracy and not an anarcho-capitalist
society. To this day, civilization knows of no other form government that offers a peaceful

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exchange of power, where the laws and their enforcement are kept in check by a welldefined system of checks and balances. With this system of government, one has the
greatest probability of allowing the advancement of civilization and thus knowledge,
while preserving the ends sought of life, liberty, and property.