America was once a far more principled small government nation than it is now, but there were some fatal flaws in the system. Hans Herman Hoppe has said that if the government has a monopoly on the court system, then there is a conflict of interest. In any dispute between the government and an individual, the government court will tend to rule in the government’s favour, and the same applies in other areas such as law or executive functions. Is there something about an Objectivist government that would be inherently more stable?
That is a simplification, and also assumes a culture of unobjective, immoral judges.
In a proper system of checks and balances, the law courts would have no close relationship with, for example, the executive branch of the government. In addition, courts would have no close relationship to each other - so, for example, one judge would not have any real incentive to rule in accordance with another judge if a case was appealed, simply because there is no real benefit to him doing so. This is actually more or less the case in the court system now - while precident is respected, higher courts look at the facts of the matter, and usually do not give much if any weight to the ruling of the previous judge.
So I do not understand where this issue comes up unless you assume a totally corrupt, unobjective judicary, in which case no system (public *or* private) is good.
America was once a far more principled small government nation than it is now, but there were some fatal flaws in the system. Hans Herman Hoppe has said that if the government has a monopoly on the court system, then there is a conflict of interest. In any dispute between the government and an individual, the government court will tend to rule in the government’s favour, and the same applies in other areas such as law or executive functions. Is there something about an Objectivist government that would be inherently more stable?
Absolutely! Capitalism is the only moral political system, and it’s been generally conceded that morality breeds stability. Stability comes as people become civilized- as people become fit to live in a rational way. In the long term, a country based on Objectivism is very stable and practical.
The court system isn’t the proper means of mediating a dispute between citizens and the gov’t, anyway. These sorts of problems should be taken to the *lawmakers* in order to get them fixed.
The problem arises when people adopt bad philosophy which perverts the purpose and interpretation of the law *and* the lawmakers are allowed autonomy by a flawed constitutional system. It’s not a problem with the court system.
Ah OK. So would laws change over time in an Objectivist system, or would they be set in stone from the beginning? I would imagne that unchanging laws wold be less corruptable, but may cause problems in the future. One would have to design a very elegant and timeless set of laws.
I don’t think there’s any way to prevent a government from becoming corrupt except for a philosophically grounded citzenship to keep it in check.