To no one will we sell justice the
- Slides: 9
‘To no one will we sell justice’: the ontology of corruption Simon Deakin University of Cambridge CJE 40 th Anniversary Conference, 12 July 2016
Magna Carta, clause 40 (1215) ‘Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus, rectum aut justiciam’ [‘To no one will we sell, to no-one will we delay, or deny, justice’]
La Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, Article 12 (1789) ‘La garantie des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen nécessite une force publique : cette force est donc instituée pour l'avantage de tous, et non pour l'utilité particulière de ceux auxquels elle est confiée. ’ [‘The protection of the rights of the person and citizen requires the institution of a public power…]
What is corruption? • The application of the logic of the market within the public sphere • Or: in the absence of a public-private divide, corruption is nothing more than ‘rational, utility-maximising’ behaviour
What is the rule of law? • A meta norm according to which publicly enunciated legal rules possess an inherent normative force • Or: a ‘deep stable state’ of society, in which the first best response of actors is to respect the rules generated by the legal process • A norm of this kind can only have emerged if the state was viewed as legitimate • Hence it is associated with democracy but also with the practice of constitutionality (the ‘self-limiting state’) in a wider sense
What is a market? ‘Il y a pour le service de la Bourse un crieur public… il annoncera les cotes des effets publics negocies sur le parquet…’ Ordonnance de 29 germinal, an 4 (1801)
Neoclassical economics • ‘Spread the truth – the laws of economic are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere’ (Larry Summers, 1991) • ‘If we knew more about our own economy, we would be in a better position to advise them’ (R. H. Coase, 1992)
Fieldwork in Russia (2013) • ‘It is too simple to say, “all judges are corrupt”. Some judges get political orders, some are corrupt because they “feel hungry”’ • ‘It is not always a good thing that judges and bureaucrats are better paid’ • The state is just ‘some people in power and their friends’ • ‘Russian society is a series of layers, and the leaders can only touch the top layer’
Conclusion • The institutions of democracy, including the rule of law and the public -private divide, are now fundamentally in conflict with orthodox (neoliberal/neoclassical) economics
