Читать книгу Freedom and the Law - Бруно Леони - Страница 6
ОглавлениеBruno Leoni was a devoted proponent, in virtually all his activities, of those ideals we call liberal. He was a remarkable talented, intelligent, able, persuasive, multifaceted individual who might well have deserved the description. Renaissance man, if it were not for the fact that the words have been so frequently misapplied.
Born April 26, 1913, Bruno Leoni lived a dynamic, intense, vigorous, and complex life as a scholar, lawyer, merchant, amateur architect, musician, art connoisseur, linguist, and—above all else—as a defender of the principles of individual freedom in which he so passionately believed. He was Professor of Legal Theory and the Theory of the State at the University of Pavia, where he also served as Chairman of the Faculty of Political Science, as Director of the Institute of Political Science, and as founder-editor of the quartely journal, Il Politico. As a distinguished visiting scholar, he traveled all over the world, delivering lectures at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester (in England), and Virginia and Yale (in the United States), to mention only a few. As a practicing attorney, he maintained both his law office and his residence in Turin where he was also active in the Center for Methodological Studies. He found time, on occasion, to contribute columns to the economic and financial newspaper of Milan, 24 ore. His successful efforts in saving the lives of many allied military personnel during the German occupation of northern Italy gained him not only a fold watch inscribed “To Bruno Leoni for Gallant Service to the Allies, 1945,” but also the eternal gratitude of too many persons to mention. In September 1967, he was elected President of the Mont Pelerin Society at the Congress of the Society held in Vichy, France. This was the culmination of long years of service as Secretary of the Society to which he devoted a major portion of his time and energies.
Bruno Leoni died tragically on the night of November 21, 1967, at the height of his career, at the peak of his powers, and in the prime of his life. The community of scholars all over the world is poorer without him because it has been denied those promised accomplishments and achievements he could not live to finish.
For anyone interested in knowing something of the depth and breadth of his interests, there is no better place to start than a perusal of two sources. A compilation of the works of Bruno Leoni, together with poignant testimonials by his friends and colleagues, may be found in the volume entitled, Omaggio a Bruno Leoni, collected and edited by Dr. Pasquale Scaramozzino (Ed. A. Giuffre, Milan, 1969). A casual reading will convince even the most skeptical of his wide-ranging interests and scholarly erudition. There is also the cumulative index to Il Politico, the multidisciplinary quarterly he founded in 1950, prepared so ably by Professor Scaramozzino.
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From 1954 through 1959, I had the pleasure, the duty, and the honor to administer six Institutes on Freedom and Competitive Enterprise held at Claremont Men's College (now Claremont McKenna College) in Claremont, California. The Institutes were designed to present a program of graduate lectures in economics and political science of special interest to those teaching related subjects as members of the faculties of American colleges and universities. At each of these Institutes three distinguished scholars were invited to present individually an analysis of freedom as the source of economic and political principles; an analysis of the development of the free market mechansim and its operation; and a study of the philosophical bases, characteristics, virtues, and defects of the private enterprise system.
Approximately thirty Fellows participated in each of these Institutes, selected from al ong list of applicants and nominees—most were professors or instructors in economics, political science, business administration, sociology, and history. A few were research scholars or writers and, here and there, even an academic dean or two. In all, about 190 Fellows participated in the six Institutes, drawn from ninety different colleges and universities located in forty different states, Canada, and Mexico.
The distinguished lecturers, in addition to Professor Bruno Leoni, Professor Ronald H. Coase, Professor Herrell F. De Graff, Professor Aaron Director, Professor Milton Friedman, Professor F. A. Hayek, Professor Herbert Heaton, Professor John Jewkes, Professor Frank H. Knight, Dr. Felix Morley, Jacques L. Rueff, and Professor Davdi McCord Wright.
In an effort to increase both the quality and quantity of international intellectual communication, so far as possible at least one lecturer at each Institute represented the European scholarly tradition.
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I first met Bruno Leoni in September 1957 at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting in St. Moritz, Switzerland. We were both relativelty new members of the Society, and both of us were presenting formal papers at one of the sessions. Following my return to the Univted States. I convinced my colleagues of the desirability of inviting Leoni as one of the lecturers for the upcoming Institute Leoni eagerly accepted in 1958. Leoni joined Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (the latter two each doing a second stint) as lecturers at the Fifth Institute on Freedom and Competitive Enterprise that was helf from June 15 to June 28. It was an impressive faculty. Professor Hayek's lectures ultimately became a part of his Constitution of Liberty, Professor Friedman's his volume on Capitalism and Freedom Professor Leoni's lectures were to become Freedom and the Law.
Few who attended those sessions have forgotten them. The intellectual stimulation, the discussions lasting far into the might, the camaraderie—all these combined into a nearly perfect whole. Leoni, a superb linguist fluent in English, French, and German as well as his native tongue, delivered his lectures in English from handwritten notes. I suspect they were written at odd times and, certainly on odd pieces of paper. They were constantly being amended as he became more accustomed to the group. He even brought with him a small book that had belonged to his father—a dictionary of American slang of the twenties. The lectures as well as some of the discussions were recorded on tape.
I prepared the draft of Freedom and the Law from these notes and tapes at the strong urging of F. A. (Baldy) Harper and with financial assistance from the William Volker Fund. Later a professional editor added the finishing touches. This work was done with the author's express approval and retained the order and form of delivery as far as possible. This volume is as close to the original series of lectures as the constraints of the written word permit.
The original notes, manuscript, and tapes were deposited at the Institute for Humane Studies, Inc., in Menlo Park, California. When they moved to George Mason University, this material was deposted at the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Standord University.
The first edition of Freedom and the Law was published by D. Van Nostrand Company of Princeton, New Jersey, in 1961 as part of the William Volker Fund Series in the Humane Studies. A second edition, virtually unchanged except for my new Foreword, was sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies and published by Nash Publishing Company of Los Angeles in 1972. For this new edition, I have incorporated into the Foeword some of the remarks I made at the Mont Pelerin Society General Meeting in St. Vincent, Italy, on September 1, 1986, on “The Legacy of Bruno Leoni.”
Although most of Leoni's works are in Italian, Freedom and the Law is not. At one of the Mont Pelerin Society meetings, an Italian gentleman asked if permission could be obtained to undertake an Italian translation. I replied affirmatively and enthusiastically, but nothing, so far as I know, has come of it. There have been two translations into Spanish; one published by the Centro de Estudios Sobre La Libertad in Buenos Aires (1961), and one by the Biblioteca de la Libertad, Union Editorial in Madrid (1974). Both translate the title as La Libertad y la ley.
Since its first publication, Freedom and the Law has enjoyed, I am told, considerable attention by students of law and economics. For example, 1986, two conferences on the book were held under the direction of Liberty Fund, Inc. One was held in Atlanta in May and the other in Turin, Italy, in September. The major new paper prepared for the former—“Bruno Leoni in Retrospect,” by Peter H. Aranson—was subsequently published in the Summer 1988 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy along with “Freedom and the Law: A Comment on Professor Aranson's Article,” by Leonard P. Liggio and Thomas G. Palmer.
In the opinion of many, Freedom and the Law is the least conventional and most challenging of all Leoni's works, promising to bridge, as Professor F. A. Hayek has written, “the gulf which has come to separate the study of law from that of the theoretical social sciences. … Perhaps the richness of suggestions which this book contains will be fully apparent only to those who have already been working on similar lines. Bruno Leoni would have been the last to deny that it merely points a way and that much work still lay ahead before the seeds of new ideas which it so richly contains could blossom forth in all their splendor.”
That promised bridge, unfortunately, was never completed. It is our fond hope in publishing this third edition of Freedom and the Law, together with some related lectures given in 1963, that the many students and colleagues, friends and admirers of Bruno Leoni will expand and develop the ideas and suggestions contained herein beyond the point where his efforts so abruptly ceased.
Bruno Leoni was a remarkable student of law and political science and had a susbtantial understanding of economics as well. I recall with a mixture of sorrow and joy the many facets of a Bruno Leoni i admired, loved, and enjoyed being with.
| June 1990 | Arthur Kemp |
| Professor Emeritus, Economics, | |
| Claremont McKenna College, | |
| Claremont, California |
