It is a bit mysterious why those who claim to be American-style conservatives do not accept Friedrich Hayek, an economist and legal theorist who won a Nobel Economics award for self-defined progressive (“liberal” in confusing American terminology) in 1974. Each aspect gives advantages to collective and political choices over personal and private choices, except that they are different collective choices that each wishes to impose. The difference is usually about which groups in society become poids and which groups are decorated.
I would like to clarify the passage from Hayek’s Law, Law, Liberty (1973–1979; 2021; a new edition by Jeremy Shearmur).[1] Observe how the cited passages represent ideas that fundamentally oppose the “left” and “right” of the world. I believe that the American Democrats and the Republic are unanimous. Hayek explains the role of judges in free society under common law (pp. 151–152):
The judge tries to maintain and improve the order in which, in other words, no one you are designing is based on who is based on who is being coordinated with each other. …
However, the judge has not committed to maintaining a particular status quo, but I have committed to raising the mains underlying the existing order. His work actually only makes sense within the order of spontaneous and abstract actions that the market produces. He must therefore be of the same kind in the sense that he cannot provide an order determined by the particular purpose of authority, rather than the rules of individual actions. A judge cannot have any purpose that a particular Persian or group needs, a “state reason” or “government will” or a particular order may be expected to be useful. There is no room for judges within an organization where individual actions must be determined by their conservatism for the particular purpose that they are intended for. In a socialist order in which government rules may not be independent of individual outcomes, such rules are not “justified” because they must balance specific interests that are affected in light of importance. Socialism is, in fact, a rebellion against fair justice that considers only the conformity of individual actions to independent rules and does not relate to the impact of application in a particular example. So a socialist judge would really be a contradiction of Sama. …
To feel that many people consider the judges to serve an existing but always imperfect abstract order, abstract orders that are not intended to serve a particular interest are resolved when they remember a great society that does not pursue a common private purpose, but simply desires the appropriate means to pursue individual purposes.
In short, the role of judges in a free society has nothing to do with government policy interests or the personal interests of politicians and bureaucrats. But it should be noted that this logically condemns not only socialist judges, but also judges who pretend to enforce the supremeness of collective choice, whether on the left or right. I’m practically certain that Hayek has got this fix.
Note how radical this part of Hayek’s legal theory is. The judges of the non-collected (liberal classics) political system have no role in defending government policies. I suppose that it meets the long-term agreements of the majority of the population, except that it applies to both individuals and government agents (with the exception of the government’s authority to collect legislation and freedoms and other exceptions).
Recent lawsuits provide an interesting example. The Justice Department has argued that the court found the crime of pleading guilty to using excessive force (and thus against a woman) that “public interest” was “sayed by the government in the public interest to this court.” Judge Stephen Wilson, acting like a non-collector judge, rejected the argument. From a brief review of the decision by Paul Kassel, which argued against the Court’s Department of Justice (see Reason Magazine’s Volokh Conspiracy, August 11, 2025), we may question the common interest in the existence of one free society and the public’s concern that the government is judging it.
These considerations remind us of the “public interest” as the impossible sum of private interests. [2] It is a theme to propose by Jasai to reduce the absurdity of advertising in Anthony’s spirit. The state is necessary to defend the public interest, and the public interest is what the state decides.
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[1] I’ve reviewed the entire Econlib trilogy, but the third article in my review provides two other hyperlinks.
[2] See my economic post, “What is the public interest in the name of heaven?” And my Economics article: “Political False”
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Non-collector Judges by Chatgpt
