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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Critical Review
Does Simplicity Bring Liberty?
By Frederick Schauer
Abstract
In Simple Rules for a Complex World, Richard Epstein claims to be focusing on legal simplicity, and on the link between legal simplicity and a legal system less intrusive on individual liberty. It turns out, however, that Epstein's conception of simplicity is itself soaked with the substantive idea of individual liberty. The consequences of this are that the claim that legal simplicity brings individual liberty (and legal minimalism) becomes true by definition, and that Epstein avoids taking on the important and interesting questions of whether and when legal simplicity, more conventionally understood, produces less legal intrusiveness and thus, under Epstein's own conception, more liberty.