Friedrich Hayek's epistemic approach to law

Abstract

This study aims to fill the lacuna in the legal views of a famous economist and philosopher, Economics Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek. Although Hayek’s economic and political ideas have eclipsed many other attempts to understand and overcome the social cataclysms of the 20th century, his legal views have never been explored in detail. Despite a considerable volume of secondary literature, the essence of Friedrich Hayek’s concept of law is yet to be pinned down by scholars. In order to shed light on the topic, we will resort to the reconstruction method, a classic in Hayek studies. For the main hypothesis, we assume that Hayek’s conception of law is based not on his liberal political philosophy but rather on his theory of knowledge or, in other words, his epistemology. This idea has not been tested systematically in earlier Hayek studies. The main conclusion is that the epistemological perspective on the topic allows us to observe some of the specific features of Hayek’s legal views in greater depth than the traditional “liberal” approach. Unlike these interpretations, the “epistemic concept of law” approach can help explain the radical changes in Hayek’s late works and organize his often-disparate legal ideas into a logical system. Therefore, we claim to have achieved a clearer understanding of the essence of Hayek’s legal views and further clarified his contribution to the theory of law