Do laws always restrict the liberty of the people who live under them? Or, if some laws are thought to be non-coercive—for example, laws that make voting possible— is this at least true of coercive laws? Does the coercion involved in threatening to impose penalties mean that the subjects of the laws thereby suffer a loss of freedom?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bentham, J. 1962. Anarchical Fallacies. In The Works of Jeremy Bentham: Published under the Superintendence of His Executor. Ed. J. Bowring, vol. 2. New York, N.Y.: Russell & Russell, Inc. (1st edition 1843.)
Berlin, I. 1958. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blackstone, W. 1978. Commentaries on the Laws of England. New York: Garland.
Bohman, J., and W. Rehg, eds. 1997. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Braithwaite, J., and Pettit, P. 1990. Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carter, I. 1999. A Measure of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, J. 1989. Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy. In The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State. Ed. A. Hamlin and P. Pettit. New York, N.Y.: Basil Blackwell.
Elster, J., ed. 1998. Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gutmann, A., and Thompson, D. 2004. Why Deliberative Democracy? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Habermas, J. 1984. A Theory of Communicative Action, vol.1. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. 1989. A Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. 1995. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Harrington, J. 1977. The Political Works of James Harrington. Ed. J.G.A. Pocock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harrington, J. 1992. The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayek, F.A. 1988. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Hill, B. 1986. The First English Feminist: Reflections upon Marriage and other writings by Mary Astell. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Holmes, S. 1995. Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Kramer, M.H. 2003. The Quality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kukathas, C., and Pettit, P. 1990. Rawls: A Theory of Justice and its Critics. Cambridge & Stanford: Polity Press & Stanford University Press.
Lind, J. 1776. Three Letters to Dr Price. London: T. Payne.
Locke, J. 1965. Two Treatises of Government. New York: Mentor.
McLean, J. 1999. Personality and Public Law Doctrine. University of Toronto Law Journal 49: 123–49.
McLean, J. 2004. Government to State: Globalization, Regulation, and Governments as Legal Persons. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10: 173–97.
Miller, D.1984. Constraints on Freedom. Ethics 94: 66–86.
Moon, J.D. 2003. Rawls and Habermas on Public Reason. Annual Review of Political Science 6: 257–74.
Paley, W. 1825. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. In Id., Collected Works Vol. 4. London: C. and J. Rivington.
Pettit, P. 1997a. Republican Theory and Criminal Punishment. Utilitas 9: 59–79.
Pettit, P. 1997b. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pettit, P. 2007. Free Persons and Free Choices. History of Political Thought 28: 709–18.
Pettit, P. 2008a. The Basic Liberties. In Essays on H. L. A. Hart. Ed. M. Kramer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pettit, P. 2008b. Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pettit, P. 2008c. Republican Liberty: Three Axioms, Four Theorems. In Republicanism and Political Theory. Ed. C. Laborde and J. Manor. Oxford: Blackwell.
Price, R. 1991. Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls, J. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Rawls, J. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Reid, J.P. 1988. The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution. Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press.
Skinner, Q. 1998. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q. 2006. Rethinking Political Liberty. History Workshop Journal 61: 56–70.
Skinner, Q. 2008. Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power. In Republicanism and Political Theory. Ed. C. Laborde and J. Maynor. Oxford: Blackwell.
Steiner, H. 1993. Individual Liberty. In Liberty. Ed. D. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waldron, J. 1999. Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pettit, P. (2009). Law, Liberty and Reason. In: Bongiovanni, G., Sartor, G., Valentini, C. (eds) Reasonableness and Law. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 86. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8500-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8500-0_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8499-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8500-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)