The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law.

Mossoff, Adam

BARNETT, Randy. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xi + 347 pp. Cloth, $29.95--The most famous contemporary work advancing the principles of classical liberalism and libertarianism is Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, published in 1974. Twenty-five years later on the opposite bank of the Charles River, Boston University law professor Randy E. Barnett now hopes to pick up the libertarian mantle with his first published book, The Structure of Liberty. Advancing what he simply calls "liberalism" (a term that I will use throughout the review to refer to Barnett's synthesis of classical liberalism and libertarianism), he offers fresh arguments for theories that many might have considered to have already received their preeminent expression in Nozick's earlier work.

The reason for the surprising relevance of The Structure of Liberty is twofold. First, drawing upon his knowledge and experiences as a law professor, and before that as a prosecutor in Chicago, Barnett quickly leaves the realm of theory to study the application of the principles he is proposing. In fact, the Introduction to the book--a theoretical exposition of natural law and natural rights--concludes with his expression of frustration with contemporary political and legal philosophers because "they usually focus exclusively on such philosophical issues and never get around to showing how such an approach actually works" (p. 24). The rest of the book is thus dedicated to explaining how liberalism serves as a solution to pervasive problems affecting everyone in organized society.

Second, Barnett does not focus the themes of his work around answering objections raised against liberalism. To the contrary, the majority of the book contains original exegeses on the purpose, function, and implications of the principles of liberalism. Barnett writes: "The thesis of this book [is] how certain rights and procedures that define the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law address the serious and pervasive problems of knowledge, interest, and power" (p. 314). Thus, throughout the core of the book, Barnett discusses these three pervasive problems and how the myriad principles, rules, and institutions of liberalism provide indispensable solutions.

Nonetheless, philosophers in particular will probably find the concluding section of the book the most interesting and germane. It is here that Barnett addresses common themes of contemporary political philosophy, such as the neutrality thesis, Rawls's "impoverished view" (p. 315) of rights, distributive justice, and the nature of public-policy analysis. The central theme of this final section can be summed up as: the limits of criticism.

This theme is best exemplified in Barnett's analysis of the neutrality thesis. He poignantly questions the premise behind the neutrality critique itself; asking if the charge of hypocrisy and lack of neutrality really establishes any truth about the ordering of society at all. Simply because one has allegedly proven the non-neutral status of liberal political associations, then that does not by itself establish the legitimacy of adopting an explicitly non-neutral political system. "If we have learned nothing else from the millions of killings we have witnessed in the twentieth century," writes Barnett, "we have learned that the problems of power are only magnified when force is used to assure compliance with a vision of `the good'" (p. 307). The pervasive problems of knowledge, power, and interest that give rise to the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law do not disappear if liberalism is allegedly non-neutral in any meaningful way.

It is difficult to convey the comprehensiveness of The Structure of Liberty, and raise the questions that still need to be asked. Given the scope of Barnett's project, he comes to many conclusions that should be questioned. This is particularly the case in the latter portions of the book in which he reaches some radical libertarian conclusions, such as critiquing the "vicious cycle of public property, public police, and public prisons" (p. 221). Regardless of one's final conclusions regarding the merit of Barnett's liberalism, this book is certainly a must-read for anyone concerned with studying, or refuting, these ideas.--Adam Mossoff, University of Chicago Law School.

(*) Books received are acknowledged in this section by a brief resume, report, or criticism. Such acknowledgement does not preclude a more detailed examination in a subsequent Critical Study. From time to time, technical books dealing with such fields as mathematics, physics, anthropology, and the social sciences will be reviewed in this section, if it is thought that they night be of special interest to philosophers.