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Adam Smith as Legal and Constitutional Theorist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

John Christian Laursen
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Type
Review Essay
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Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Summer 1991 , pp. 615 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1991 

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References

1 Surely the omission of Smith in most standard works on the history of jurisprudence is responsible for this kind of error. For example, there is no chapter devoted to Smith in Huntington Cairn's classic Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949); and there is nothing about Smith in recent overviews such as Joel Feinberg & Hyman Gross, Philosophy of Law (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1986), or Jeffrie G. Murphy & Jules Coleman, Philosophy of Law: An Introduction to Jurisprudence (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1990).Google Scholar

2 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Glasgow Edition, ed. A. L. Macfie & D. D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 [corrected ed. 1979]; Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982).Google Scholar

3 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Glasgow Edition, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 [corrected ed. 1979]; Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1981).Google Scholar

4 Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, Glasgow Edition, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982).Google Scholar

5 See Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) (“Haakonssen, Science”), and articles such as Dickey, Laurence, “Historicizing the ‘Adam Smith Problem’: Conceptual, Historiographical, and Textual Issues,” 58 J. Mod. Hist. 579 (1986);Nieli, Russell, “Spheres of Intimacy and the Adam Smith Problem,” 47 J. Hist. Ideas 611 (1986).Google Scholar

6 Here, BruDhlmeier relies on the relevant entries in J. Ritter & K. GruDnder, eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 6 vols. (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1971-), and O. Brunner, W. Conze, & R. Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundhegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politschen-sozialen Sprache Deutschlands, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972-). Since these conceptual dictionaries appeared, no treatment of early modern and modern legal and political concepts can claim historical completeness without reference to them. See Richter, Melvin, “Conceptual History and Political Theory,” 14 Pol. Themy 621 (1986), and id., ”Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas,” 48 J. Hist. Ideas 247 (1987).Google Scholar

7 Neil MacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy: Essays in Legal and Political Philosophy 253 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) (“MacCormick, Legal Right”).Google Scholar

8 Brühlmeier's characterization of Smith's view of human nature is more consistent than D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith 59–60 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), who, in what may be a momentary lapse, writes that Smith may be assuming altruism in the legal and medical professions. Smith was not so inconsistent, and not so naive.Google Scholar

9 See Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belks Lettres, Glasgow Edition, ed. J. C. Bryce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983; Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 MacCormick, Legal Right 125.Google Scholar

11 Brühlmeier might have placed Smith in the context of Franco Venturi's influential four-volume Settecento Riformatore (Torino: Einaudi, 1969–84). In English, see F. Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); id., Italy and the Enlightenment (London: Longman, 1972); id., The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1769–1776: The First Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); and elsewhere.Google Scholar

12 Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 25 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) (“Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously”).Google Scholar

13 Brühlmeier quotes from H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law ch. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). At a number of other points, Brühlmeier demonstrates that Smith's ideas generally support Hart in the Hart-Dworkin debate. He understands Hart's positivism as humane and multidimensional.Google Scholar

14 Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 22–28; Robert Alexy,” Rechtsregeln und Rechtsprincipien,”Geltungs- und Erkenntnisbedingungen im modernen Rechtsdenken, ARSP Beiheft No. 25, at 22 (Stuttgart, 1985).Google Scholar

15 Neil MacCormick, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory 100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Regrettably, Brühlmeier does not provide more citations directly from Smith here, so we are left to construct the case from previously mentioned materials. But his general argument is quite plausible.Google Scholar

16 Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law 74 (New Haven: Yale University Press, rev. ed. 1969).Google Scholar

17 Smith's reverential language when referring to rules is striking (quoted at 76). But Brühlmeier juxtaposes this to Smith's more flexible language elsewhere.Google Scholar

18 Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon, 1978).Google Scholar

19 Brühlmeier does not spell this out, but doing so would have clarified his account.Google Scholar

20 Brühlmeier implicitly rejects Hollander's account of Smith's historical dimension as a “digression” (at 279) and “scaffolding” that is not “formally essential” (at 289) in ”The Historical Dimension of the Wealth of Nations,” 14 Transactions Royal Soc. Can. 277 (1976). Hollander's economist's idea of what history means may be the flaw in his account. Winch, Donald, “Science and the Legislator: Adam Smith and After,” 93 Econ. J. 501, 518 (1983), also criticizes Hollander.Google Scholar

21 On the four stages, see Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), and Istvan Hont,” The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four-Stages Theory’”in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modem Europe 253–76 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

22 Brühlmeier points out (at 84n.) that Helmut Coing traces this back only to Bentham in “Benthams Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der Interessenjurisprudenz und der allgemeinen Rechtslehre,” 54 Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 69, 73, 81 (1968), though it already appears in Smith's L.J.Google Scholar

23 See, e.g., Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision chs. 1 and 4, passim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

24 In a note, Brühlmeier mentions the prohibition of written commentaries on the law in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (at 100n.). He need not have turned to fiction: this topos already appears in 1 T. Mommsen, P. Krueger, & A. Watson, eds., The Digest of Justinian, xlviii-xlix, lxii-lxiii (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). That code, however, was written long after Rome had passed out of the pastoral stage.Google Scholar

25 Duncan Forbes,” Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce, and Liberty,” in A. S. Skinner & T. Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith 182 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Forbes may be partially excused for this underestimation because he did not have access to Smith's 1762–63 lectures on jurisprudence (now in LJ), which are more extensive than the 1763–64 lectures (previously published in 1896 and now also in LJ under the title “Report dated 1766”) (see Forbes at 179n.).Google Scholar

26 Brühlmeier takes as the main representative of this school Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law (Boston: Little, Brown, 3d ed. 1986).Google Scholar

27 Winch develops this human (as opposed to a purely economic) element in “Science and the Legislator,” 93 Econ. J. at 502, 510.Google Scholar

28 Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle 256 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

30 See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

31 Kim Lane Scheppele, Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) (“Scheppele, Legal Secrets”).Google Scholar

32 Id. at 67.Google Scholar

33 Id. at 67 n.20.Google Scholar

34 A current example is the well-known reluctance of juries to convict drunken drivers of murder, commonly attributed to the jury members' reflections on their own driving habits.Google Scholar

35 Scheppele, Legal Secrets 70–71, 82, 84. Another recent writer who labors mightily to produce a better model of self-interest when he might have found one in Smith is Gary R. Orren,” Beyond Self-Interest,” in Robert B. Reich, ed., The Power of Public Ideas (Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1988). Orren mentions Smith along with Sir James Steuart as progenitors of modern pluralism and rational actor theory, but, significantly, quotes from Steuart for language that reflects a limited vision, id. at 15, 29. If he had looked at Smith, he would have found answers to his questions: “where do values come from? how are they shared? how do they shape political and economic behavior?”Id. at 29.Google Scholar

36 Scheppele, Legal Secrets 71.Google Scholar

37 For Rawls's explicit repudiation of characterizations of his theory of justice as part of the theory of rational choice, see id.,” Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 14 Phil & Pub. Affairs 223, 237 n. 20 (1985). Reviewing Scheppele's book in this journal, Linda R. Hirshman, 15 Law & Soc. Inquiry 555 (1990), misrepresents the relation between Rawls and Smith by describing Scheppele's purpose as “proving that the judges have been speaking John Rawls, rather than Adam Smith, all along” (at 555–56). Hirshman explains that “by Adam Smith, I mean the whole group of wealth maximizers” (at 556 n. 4). It should be clear by now that Smith was no simplistic wealth maximizer and that Scheppele is in effect trying to prove that the judges have been speaking Rawls and Smith.Google Scholar

38 Id. at 311.Google Scholar

39 Brühlmeier reports that to his knowledge, Smith was the first to use the term “philosophy of law” in English (at 181n.).Google Scholar

40 Robert Mud, The Man Without Qualities (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979). See also Brühlmeier's reference to Musil as legal theorist (at 27n.) and use of a Musil quotation as his epigraph (at 1).Google Scholar

41 Günther Patzig, Der Unterschied Zwischen subjektiven und objektiven Interessen und seine Bedeutung für die Ethik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978).Google Scholar

42 Peter Häberle, Verfassung als öffentlicher Proze β. Materialien zu einer Verfassungstheorie der offenen Gesellschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1978), e.g., at 502; Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975).Google Scholar

43 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), especially sec. 8, e.g., at 319.Google Scholar

44 Id. at 223.Google Scholar

45 Id. at sec. 5, especially at 9–11, 35, 76.Google Scholar

46 Duncan Kennedy,” The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries,” 28 Buffalo L. Rev. 205 (1979).Google Scholar

47 Blackstone, 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 51, 150–51 (1765–69; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).Google Scholar

48 Albert Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 2d ed. 1914).Google Scholar

49 Max Weber, 1 Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology 333, ed. G. Roth & C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).Google Scholar

50 In a review of this book, Alexander Blankenagel, 114 Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts 661, 662 (1989), pointed out that the selection of themes treated in the latter part of the book appears to be somewhat arbitrary. But the author does not claim that it is a systematic selection, and for his purposes that is not necessary. At this point, the book is developing a theory from suggestions in a variety of sources rather than presenting an exhaustive treatment of everything on the subject.Google Scholar

In another review, Pierangelo Schiera, 16 Jus commune 519, 520 (1989), observes (in the course of an otherwise very positive evaluation) that a deeper treatment of some of the themes would have been worthwhile, rather than the brief survey of so many of them. Perhaps other writers will take up that suggestion, but there is still a place for a wide-ranging synoptic study like this one, if for no other reason than to create a context for monographic studies. Schiera also wonders (writing in Italian) why so much attention is paid to American authors (at 521). But American readers are not likely to complain about that.Google Scholar

51 At 216n., the author describes Richard A. Epstein's Takings: Private Power and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) (“Epstein, Takings”) as an indicator of Epstein's judicial activism. But see Epstein, , “The Proper Scope of the Commerce Power,” 73 Va. L. Rev. 1387, 1455 (1987), for Epstein's hesitation to change the law where reliance interests have been created.Google Scholar

52 Michelman, Frank I., “Property, Utility, and Fairness: Comments on the Ethical Foundations of ‘Just Compensation’ Law,” 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1165 (1967); Bruce A. Acker-man, Private Property and the Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). It would have been appropriate to comment on Epstein's Takings in this connection.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Michelman, Frank, “Law's Republic,” 97 Yale L.J. 1493, 1496–97, 1520–21 (1988);Ackerman, Bruce, “The Storrs Lectures: Discovering the Constitution,” 93 Yale L.J. 1013 (1984), and id.,” Transformative Appointments,” 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1164 (1988); Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

54 478 US. 186 (1986); Michelman, , 97 Yale L.J. 1496–97, 1521.Google Scholar

55 Id. at 1504,1506.Google Scholar

56 Donald Winch,” Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition,”in Knud Haakonssen, ed., Traditions of Liberalism: Essays on John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill 93 (Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies, 1988).Google Scholar

57 Id. at 88–89.Google Scholar

58 Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law (Mineola: Foundation Press, 1978), and id., ”Constitutional Calculus: Equal Justice or Economic Efficiency?” 98 Harv. L. Rev. 592 (1985); Duncan Kennedy, 28 Buffalo L. Rev. 205, and id., ”Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication,” 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1685 (1976).Google Scholar

59 Tribe, Laurence, 98 Harv. L. Rev. at 617.Google Scholar

60 Kennedy, Duncan, 89 Harv. L. Rev. at 1713.Google Scholar

61 Reich, Charles A., “The New Property,” 73 Yale L.J. 733 (1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Haakonssen, Science.Google Scholar

63 Cathy D. Matson & Peter S. Onuf, A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990).Google Scholar

64 Id., especially ch. 1.Google Scholar

65 Id., especially chs. 4–8.Google Scholar

66 Id. at 162.Google Scholar

67 Another recent example of this genre is Heiner Bielefeldt, Newzeitliches Freiheitsrecht und politische Gerechtigkeit: Perspektiven der Gesellschaftsvertragstheorien (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1990).Google Scholar