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The greatest obstacle to rule of law in our time, contends the author of this thought-provoking work, is the problem of overlegislation. In modern democratic societies, legislative bodies are increasingly usurping functions that were and should be exercised by individuals or groups rather than government. The result is an unwieldy surfeit of laws and regulations that by their sheer volume stifle individual freedom.

Abraham Lincoln, in a speech at Baltimore in 1864, recognized both the difficulty of defining “freedom” and the fact that the Civil War between the North and the South was based, in a way, on a misunderstanding related to that word. “The world,” he said, “has never had a good definition of the word “liberty.” . . . In using the same word, we do not mean the same thing.”

Bruno Leoni

Bruno Leoni (1913-1967) was an attorney and Professor of Legal Theory and the Theory of the State at the University of Pavia, Italy, where he was also Chairman of the Faculty of Political Science. He was the founder-editor of quarterly journal Il Politico. He was well known as a visiting scholar and lecturer at the universities of Oxford, Manchester, Yale and Virginia. Leoni had been elected President of the Mont Pelerin Society shortly before his untimely death.