Library/Politics & Society/The Law

Cover of The Law

The Law

Frederic Bastiat

Bastiat argues that law should protect life, liberty, and property, and becomes destructive when it turns into an instrument for legalized plunder.

What stuck

  • Law does its best work when it protects people from coercion rather than organizing society from above.
  • Once law becomes a vehicle for redistributing favors, politics gets uglier fast.