The Rule of Law, Property, and the Violation of Human Rights: a Plea for Social Justice by Omar Swartz

Against the widespread belief that "violence begins when the law ends," this book has argued that the Rule of Law itself is often violent, particularly towards the poor. Thus, rather than romanticising the Rule of Law and removing it from criticism, we can judge the law on its actual social effects. As a barrier to social justice, the Rule of Law challenges us to transcend it. In its place, we can cultivate a worldwide sense of fraternity and solidarity. If we learn to live the ideal of equality, we no longer will need the Rule of Law to reify inequality. Rejection of the Rule of Law should not be taken to suggest a denial of structure. Society needs structure, but it can reflect and serve a different set of normative values than those reified in the Anglo-American legal tradition, which sanctioned many of the most notorious atrocities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The Rule of Law is but one form of structure - one that belongs to an earlier age of human moral development, one better left behind us. We would be short-sighted to assume that the Rule of Law is the best form of social structure - that humans are incapable of creating something different and more humane. We might learn to understand that the Rule of Law prevents us from attaining a much more inclusive and sustainable notion of the good. Perhaps the very sense of morality championed during the past several centuries in the Anglo-American tradition is what is holding us back. Perhaps the globalisation of American values will be recognised, as time progresses, as a setback for the human species. One day, in the not so distant future, the world may happily repudiate the superficial materialism many equate with American values.Until that time, however, we have to deal with the problems our system represents. The Rule of Law is a good place to start. Specifically, while the absence of social structure is undesirable, the mere presence of law is not itself a good, and its benefits often conceal its implicit barbarism. By accepting the Rule of Law, we simply may have substituted a more nuanced form of barbarism for a coarser version. The Law of the Jungle has given way to the Law of Greed. The claw and the fang still haunt the modern world. Injustice has become institutionalised and accepted as the birthright of civilisation.