Abstract: What is liberty, as opposed to licence, and why is it so important? When people pursue happiness, peace, and prosperity whilst living in society, they confront pervasive problems of knowledge, interest, and power. These problems are dealt with by ensuring the liberty of the people to pursue their own ends, but addressing these problems also requires that liberty be structured by certain rights and procedures associated with the classical liberal conception of justice and the rule of law. This book identifies the content of natural rights—several property, freedom of contract, first possession, restitution, and self defence—and explains how natural rights are distinct from natural law and why these abstract rights require a conventional rule of law to implement. Barnett discusses the practicality of restitution as an alternative to punishment in criminal justice and the constitutional principles that are needed to protect fundamental rights from enforcement error and abuse. After describing how a polycentric legal system would function, he concludes by considering communitarian objections and those based on retributive and distributive justice.

Keywords: communitarianism, distributive justice, legal system, liberty, natural law, natural rights, punishment, restitution, retributive justice, rule of law