Can There Be An Unjust Law?
Frederick Bastiat was quick to note that there is a lot of confusion about where law gains its moral force. “There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are ‘just’ because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.”5 Of course, the common person has had a lot of help in developing this confusion about the nature of justice. “. . . [L]egal positivists such as Thomas Hobbes argued that the essence of law is the command or will of the sovereign and that an ‘unjust law’ is a contradiction in terms because the existing law is itself the standard of justice.”6 Although Hobbes no doubt hoped to offer ideas that would kee
