Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty - Institute of Economic Affairs

6 THE RULE OF LAW AND ITS
DETRACTORS (Chapters 14 and 16)
Hayek’s primary aim in The Constitution of Liberty is to explain
the meaning and practical significance of the Rule of Law. Part II,
where this ideal is portrayed, is the book’s centre, both literally
and substantively.
Hayek had often spoken of the Rule of Law in earlier writings
(see 1944b [2007b]: 112–23), but his fullest account, prior to The
Constitution of Liberty, appears in a set of four lectures, delivered
in 1955 at the invitation of the Bank of Egypt, entitled The Political
Ideal of the Rule of Law (1955). Later, Hayek explains that while en
route to Egypt, he and his wife spent several months in Europe,
retracing a journey that J. S. Mill had once made to Italy and
Greece. The trip rekindled Hayek’s interest in Mill’s On Liberty
and its case for freedom. The Cairo Lectures, together with his
‘constant preoccupation with Mill’s thinking,’ brought it about
that after Hayek returned to Chicago in the autumn of 1955, ‘the
plan for The Constitution of Liberty suddenly stood clearly before
my mind … I had before me a clear plan for a book on liberty
arranged round the Cairo lectures’ (1994: 129–30). In this light, we
see that Part I of The Constitution of Liberty takes up questions of
individual freedom that Mill wrestled with, but failed to resolve
satisfactorily. Part II restates and expands the Cairo Lectures. Part
III applies the Rule of Law to issues of government policy. Hayek
drew heavily from the Cairo Lectures in preparing The Constitution
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