Back in bookstores, with a new title and a new edition, Freedom and law by Bruno Leoni. The volume is edited by Carlo Lottieri and preceded by an introductory essay by Raimondo Cubeddu.
Result of lessons held in California in 1958, Freedom and the Law it is the text that has drawn attention to Bruno Leoni the most: first in the United States, where it was published in 1961, then also in Italy, where it was only published in 1995 by the types of Liberilibriwith the title Freedom and the law.
The new translation tends to highlight how at the center of Leoni’s reflection there was a rethinking of the law and a reduction in legislation: it can be called a company free men one in which any contingent oligarchy of “legislators” can at its discretion nullify exchanges freely carried out between consenting adults? Although it may seem like a technical argument, it is not at all, because what the author is interested in is a fundamental defense of individual freedomwhich he analyzes with a philosophical but at the same time also economic, political and legal approach.
In those conferences Leoni wanted above all to underline that it’s not enough to ask for “fewer laws”, since this would accept the idea that law is nothing more than a product of the State. As a jurist he underlines the need to think about another law: a different way of conceiving and developing the rules of coexistence. Leoni senses that rediscover the law – and reducing the role and growing weight of legislation in almost all legal systems in the world – is absolutely necessary for the protection of everyone’s freedoms, which are difficult to define objectively and unambiguously: “I don’t think that legislation should be completely abandoned . […] However I maintain that legislation is effectively incompatible with the initiative and decision of individuals when it reaches a limit that contemporary society seems to have largely exceeded”.
Bruno Leoni (Ancona 1913 – Turin 1967) taught Philosophy of Law and Doctrine of the State at the University of Pavia. Here he founded and directed the magazine “Il Politico”, introducing into Italy the political issues most debated in Anglo-Saxon culture at the time. He was president of the Mont Pelerin Society, the club founded by von Hayek, which includes among its members great figures of liberalism and various Nobel Prize winners in economics. Intrepid defender of the individual against any tyrannical protection of public powers, and for this reason in the thirty years following his death, diligently ostracized by the hegemonic culture of our country, Leoni represents an essential point of reference for scholars of political science. Liberilibri also published Bruno Leoni The right as a claim And Modern and contemporary political thought.
Carlo Lottieri (1960) he studied philosophy in Genoa before continuing his studies in Geneva and Paris, where he obtained a doctorate under the guidance of Raymond Boudon. He teaches philosophy of law at the University of Verona and is director of the political theory department of the Bruno Leoni Institute. He has already published for Liberilibri Contemporary libertarian thought; For a new Constituent Assembly. Free the territories, revitalize the communities; The property under attack.
Raimondo Cubeddu (1951) taught political philosophy at the University of Pisa and is currently a senior fellow of the Bruno Leoni Institute. He dealt with Popper, Strauss, the Austrian School, Bruno Leoni, the influence of Epicureanism in the birth and formation of modern political philosophy, and edited the Italian editions of works by Böhm-Bawerk, Hayek, Leoni, Menger and Strauss. He published for Liberilibri Institutions and freedom; he cured On the method of social sciences by Carl Menger and, with Marco Menon, Another Menger. Controversial writings.
Bruno Leoni,Freedom and lawedited by Carlo Lottieri, Introductory essay by Raimondo Cubeddu, Liberilibri 2024, Oche del Campidoglio series, 222 pages, 20 euros
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