IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/69862.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Magna Carta, the Rule of Law and the Limits on Government

Author

Listed:
  • Fernandez-Villaverde, Jesus

Abstract

This paper surveys the legal tradition that links Magna Carta with the modern concepts of the rule of law and the limits on government. It documents that the original understanding of the rule of law included substantive commitments to individual freedom and limited government. Then, it attempts at explaining how and why such commitments were lost to a formalist interpretation of the rule of law from 1848 to 1939. The paper concludes by arguing how a revival of the substantive commitments of the rule of law is central in a project of reshaping modern states.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernandez-Villaverde, Jesus, 2015. "Magna Carta, the Rule of Law and the Limits on Government," MPRA Paper 69862, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:69862
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/69862/1/MPRA_paper_69862.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hayek, F. A., 2012. "Hayek on Hayek," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226321202 edited by Kresge, Stephen & Wenar, Leif, December.
    2. Buchanan, James M, 1987. "The Constitution of Economic Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 243-250, June.
    3. Morris M. Kleiner & Alan B. Krueger, 2013. "Analyzing the Extent and Influence of Occupational Licensing on the Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages 173-202.
    4. Hayek, F. A., 2011. "The Constitution of Liberty," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226315379 edited by Hamowy, Ronald, December.
    5. Ernst, Daniel R., 2014. "Tocqueville's Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900-1940," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199920860.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ruixue Jia & Gérard Roland & Yang Xie, 2021. "A Theory of Power Structure and Institutional Compatibility: China vs. Europe Revisited," NBER Working Papers 28403, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Philipp Bagus & José Antonio Peña-Ramos & Antonio Sánchez-Bayón, 2021. "COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Bruce Caldwell & Leonidas Montes, 2015. "Friedrich Hayek and his visits to Chile," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 261-309, September.
    3. Bruce Caldwell, 2020. "The Road to Serfdom after 75 Years," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(3), pages 720-748, September.
    4. Andrew Farrant, 2019. "What Should (Knightian) Economists Do? James M. Buchanan's 1980 Visit to Chile," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(3), pages 691-714, January.
    5. Vincent Carret, 2022. "Jacques Rueff, Friedrich Hayek, and the Emergence of Economic Order: the Case of the European Coal and Steel Community," Working Papers halshs-03824688, HAL.
    6. G. R. Steele, 2005. "Psychology, social evolution and liberalism: a Hayekian trinity," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 571-586.
    7. Richard M. Ebeling, 2014. "Hayek and Mises," Chapters, in: Roger W. Garrison & Norman Barry (ed.), Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics, chapter 7, pages 138-164, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Karen Horn, 2020. "Richard E. Wagner (Ed.): James M. Buchanan—A theorist of political economy and social philosophy," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 259-265, June.
    9. James Hart & Matt Henn, 2017. "Neoliberalism and the Unfolding Patterns of Young People’s Political Engagement and Political Participation in Contemporary Britain," Societies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, November.
    10. William R. Morgan, 2023. "Finance Must Be Defended: Cybernetics, Neoliberalism and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-21, February.
    11. Allison Dwyer Emory, 2019. "Unintended Consequences: Protective State Policies and the Employment of Fathers with Criminal Records," Working Papers wp19-04-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    12. Gutmann, Jerg & Metelska-Szaniawska, Katarzyna & Voigt, Stefan, 2024. "Leader characteristics and constitutional compliance," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    13. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    14. Sauro Mocetti & Giacomo Roma & Enrico Rubolino, 2022. "Knocking on Parents’ Doors: Regulation and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(2), pages 525-554.
    15. Etienne Farvaque & Alexander Mihailov & Alireza Naghavi, 2018. "The Grand Experiment of Communism: Discovering the Trade-Off between Equality and Efficiency," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(4), pages 707-742, December.
    16. Vassiliades, C. & Savvides, A. & Buonomano, A., 2022. "Building integration of active solar energy systems for façades renovation in the urban fabric: Effects on the thermal comfort in outdoor public spaces in Naples and Thessaloniki," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 30-47.
    17. Bamieh, Omar & Cintolesi, Andrea, 2021. "Intergenerational transmission in regulated professions and the role of familism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 857-879.
    18. Adam Martin & Matias Petersen, 2019. "Poverty Alleviation as an Economic Problem," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 43(1), pages 205-221.
    19. Peter J. Boettke & Alexander W. Salter & Daniel J. Smith, 2018. "Money as meta-rule: Buchanan’s constitutional economics as a foundation for monetary stability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 529-555, September.
    20. Ahmad Adeel & Bruno Notteboom & Ansar Yasar & Kris Scheerlinck & Jeroen Stevens, 2021. "Sustainable Streetscape and Built Environment Designs around BRT Stations: A Stated Choice Experiment Using 3D Visualizations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-21, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rule of Law; Magna Carta; Legal Theory; Limited Government.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:69862. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.