WEBVTT NOTE A Case for the Civil Law over Common Law: Response to Hayek 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 My paper is basically serving as a response to F.A. Hayek's criticism of civil law. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:14.000 A few things, I actually rewrote this last night, because the last time I gave this presentation it was to a group of civilian lawyers, 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 and it was very widely received there as I'm sure you can imagine. 4 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:23.000 But for those who saw me frantically writing next door, I actually also rewrote it in the last hour. 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.000 The big thing I want to start off with that I forgot to do is definitions. 6 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.000 When we talk about civil law, we're not talking about any type of codified law. 7 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:36.000 We're talking about law that's in the tradition of Roman law. 8 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.000 There are actually civil law countries that don't have a code. 9 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:45.000 Scotland and South Africa both are civilian countries that have no code. 10 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:49.000 And in fact, as we see, the whole world is now codified. 11 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:53.000 I would not classify that as civil or Roman law. 12 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:58.360 Law. This has been the agreed upon term for a while, but I just want to make sure that 13 00:00:58.360 --> 00:01:03.080 the definitions are straight going forward. These definitions are obviously very debatable, 14 00:01:03.080 --> 00:01:06.600 but that's what I'm going to be using for this presentation. 15 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:09.680 So you guys heard all about his legal views, so I'm not going to go into that too much. 16 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:14.360 I'm just going to put out this one fact about the law and economics movement. Hayek would 17 00:01:14.360 --> 00:01:18.840 have been a critic of this movement, I believe. Richard Posner and Professor Boudreau from 18 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:25.840 from George Mason University have conflicting law review articles about this. Hayek believed 19 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:31.840 that the judges should not enforce what they believe the law should be on the people. Right? 20 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:38.160 And so he believed in this random order. Posner disliked this about Hayek and he wrote a law 21 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:44.680 review article about it who drove, thoroughly defended Hayek. Hayek's criticisms of the 22 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:53.680 The Civil Law are the very classical criticisms. He calls the civil law created while the common law is discovered. 23 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:59.680 And I'll go into what that means in a couple seconds. And the other criticism is that it's just too rigid of a system. 24 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:09.680 The judges can't operate within it. Why is this important? This is why. The blue is civil law. 25 00:02:09.680 --> 00:02:19.680 And by the way, the brown that you will see my home state of Louisiana in, we are not a civil law jurisdiction, we are a mixed jurisdiction. 26 00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:26.680 You will not hear me mention civil, sorry, Louisiana law here today, because we're not civilian, we're mixed. 27 00:02:26.680 --> 00:02:30.680 That was the only project for this before in the last paper, by the way. 28 00:02:30.680 --> 00:02:33.680 So creative versus discovered, what does this mean? 29 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:39.680 Created law is when a group of people get together and write down what the law should be. 30 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:43.680 How do I assert my will over you? 31 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:51.680 Discovered law is a sporadic process of mostly common law cases, and out of this will come some sort of pattern. 32 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:57.680 We see it in economics as prices. In the common law, we get rules. 33 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:02.680 For any of you who have been to law school after Langdell from Harvard Law School came out, 34 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:12.680 We now talk about rule statements. For those of you who have been to law school, you do outlines based on these rule statements, hundreds of them, way too many. 35 00:03:12.680 --> 00:03:27.680 So let's see if this test of is the civil law really created holds up over time. Hayek concedes that the 12 tables is good law. That is so-called discovered law. 36 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:35.680 So I'm going to use that as my premise, I'm going to use that as my starting point, and from there we're going to go into the jurists of the Roman law period. 37 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:41.680 I'm not going to have time to go through all of this, I really apologize about that, but I don't want to bore y'all to death either. 38 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:52.680 So basically what they did is they wrote down opinions, right? They advised judges, they advised the different parties about what the law is. 39 00:03:52.680 --> 00:04:02.680 And they would summarize these into what they called soumets, and they would do this completely free, and they would basically, the soumets became treatises basically. 40 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:08.680 What happened to this document, the soumets? They went to Gaius and his institutes. 41 00:04:08.680 --> 00:04:16.680 There he had a law school, if you will, and they just read these, and they just expounded on these and discussed these. 42 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:21.680 The twelve tables and the soumets were their starting point. 43 00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:27.680 After Gaius came Justinian, and he is the big guy. I wanted to give him a full slide, but I just couldn't find the time. 44 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:36.680 Justinian wrote a digest, a code, and novels, which was legislation. The only one that we're going to be focusing on is the code. 45 00:04:36.680 --> 00:04:44.680 He borrowed heavily from Gaius and early Roman law. A lot of people, myself included, believe he kind of cheated and said that, 46 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:55.680 and said that, oh, look how smart I am, and Hayek, if you will, would agree with this, I believe, and he said, you know, that at the end of the day, Justinian very heavily borrowed from Gaius, maybe a little bit too much. 47 00:04:55.680 --> 00:05:01.680 What happens from there? The Glossators are enormously important. I know this is boring, y'all. I'm really sorry. This is just really important. 48 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:09.680 The Glossators write thousands and thousands and thousands of gloss in this code that came from Justinian. 49 00:05:09.680 --> 00:05:15.680 What is a gloss? It is simply a small note of a case that has come up. So they'll write, 50 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:21.680 ah, here we have sale of a hope. In this case they said this was allowed. In this case they said it wasn't allowed. 51 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:28.680 So basically it's adding footnotes of what the law was, not what they thought the law should be. 52 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:35.680 What happens when there's a hole in this code is the obvious question they put in the societal norms. 53 00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:41.720 okay they put in the they put in what they saw happening around them there is 54 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:47.440 no evidence that they put in what they thought the law should be so then we go 55 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:53.080 to canon law which is happening the same time as the glossators okay the canon law 56 00:05:53.080 --> 00:05:57.160 is this church system I don't want to focus on this too much I think a lot of 57 00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:03.040 people do want to focus on this the the canon law provided the structure for the 58 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:11.040 The Future System. That's the most important part of Canon Law. Before this, it was kind of this willy-nilly little, well, there's this rule over here, there's this rule over here. 59 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:17.040 Canon Law provided the structure for what they could impose the rules in. 60 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:30.040 Now we get to the codification part. Pufendorf, Pottier and Doma, by the way, in my opinion, Pufendorf would have been not nearly as famous, if his name was not Pufendorf, because that name is awesome. 61 00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:41.040 But what do Pouffendorf, Pottier and Douma do? They take these thousands of gloss, thousands of gloss, and put them into the code based off of Justinian. 62 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:50.040 And what do they do? They get rid of all the citations. Okay, before this, I mean, it's just not, I mean, books and books and hundreds and hundreds of books of books. 63 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:55.040 I mean, just, you could never use it. They made basically the code usable. 64 00:06:55.040 --> 00:07:00.120 And once again, if there was anything that the code was missing, that a case came up, 65 00:07:00.120 --> 00:07:02.600 they would use custom. 66 00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:07.840 This led to the French and German codes, which were almost verbatim copied from Poitiers and 67 00:07:07.840 --> 00:07:08.840 Dommas. 68 00:07:08.840 --> 00:07:12.720 An interesting question is, why did this happen? 69 00:07:12.720 --> 00:07:16.240 The French code is supposed to be the most important piece of legislation to have ever 70 00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:19.600 been on the planet, and it is. 71 00:07:19.600 --> 00:07:23.640 But why would they basically copy from Poitiers and Dommas? 72 00:07:23.640 --> 00:07:29.640 Well, they had to write the code in four days, all right? 73 00:07:29.640 --> 00:07:33.640 Four days is not a lot of time to write an entire civil code. 74 00:07:33.640 --> 00:07:34.640 So what did they do? 75 00:07:34.640 --> 00:07:39.640 They summarized a potent doma, but most of the time they copied it verbatim. 76 00:07:39.640 --> 00:07:42.640 Almost no difference. 77 00:07:42.640 --> 00:07:46.640 So before I go into the next part, which is discussing the rigid code, 78 00:07:46.640 --> 00:07:48.640 how am I doing on time, by the way? 79 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.640 Oh, buddy, I'm made in the shade. 80 00:07:51.640 --> 00:07:56.640 So what happens here is I want to take a note of what we've seen and what we haven't seen. 81 00:07:56.640 --> 00:08:03.640 By the way, I'm sorry I walk. I usually walk all up and down the aisles, but I was told I would get yelled at if I do that, so I won't do that to y'all. 82 00:08:03.640 --> 00:08:08.640 What we have seen is we've seen custom time and time again. 83 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:15.640 We have seen them write down what the case law was like back in their day. 84 00:08:15.640 --> 00:08:23.640 What we have absolutely not seen is we have not seen them creating law. 85 00:08:23.640 --> 00:08:28.640 What a very odd way to create law to simply copy the generation before you. 86 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:31.640 How very odd. 87 00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:36.640 I'm going to get into why I think, I don't want to spoil the punch line if you will, 88 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:39.640 but I'm actually going to defend Hayek's interpretation at the end of this. 89 00:08:39.640 --> 00:08:41.640 So don't think I'm laying the bond too thick on him right now. 90 00:08:41.640 --> 00:08:43.640 I promise I'll come back. 91 00:08:43.640 --> 00:08:49.280 Don't boo me off the stage yet, that's what I'm trying to tell y'all. 92 00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:53.240 The next thing I want to discuss is this rigid code theory. 93 00:08:53.240 --> 00:08:55.240 So what does this mean, right? 94 00:08:55.240 --> 00:08:59.920 This means that we don't think that we can take this premise of the code, 95 00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:03.640 add on some facts, and out comes this magical outcome. 96 00:09:03.640 --> 00:09:08.520 Because what if the societal expectations, 97 00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:11.280 which is what Hayek really wants to come out of this system, 98 00:09:11.280 --> 00:09:15.180 What if that comes against what the code says to do? 99 00:09:15.180 --> 00:09:17.180 How absurd of a result would you accept? 100 00:09:17.180 --> 00:09:19.860 It's too rigid, you're going to create absurd results. 101 00:09:19.860 --> 00:09:21.500 Well, we'll see if that happens. 102 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:24.340 My hypothesis, and I think I was proven correct in this, 103 00:09:24.340 --> 00:09:28.540 is that the civil law will create a semi-black market, 104 00:09:28.540 --> 00:09:30.660 if you will, of judicial opinions, 105 00:09:30.660 --> 00:09:32.780 where the legislature will tell the courts, 106 00:09:32.780 --> 00:09:35.700 whatever you do, follow the code. 107 00:09:35.700 --> 00:09:38.460 And the court will say, yeah, okay, I got you, I got you. 108 00:09:38.460 --> 00:09:40.340 Only the code, only the code. 109 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:48.340 that sneak in something that's far above the code, expand the code if you will, and I think we see this time and time again. 110 00:09:48.340 --> 00:09:55.340 Although I promise not to mention Louisiana law, I guess I'm like a liar of myself, this has been a habitual problem in Louisiana. 111 00:09:55.340 --> 00:10:02.340 It's been written about extensively that our civil code is no longer a civil code at all, it's actually now a digest. 112 00:10:02.340 --> 00:10:05.340 That's shocking to civilian lawyers by the way, but that's fine. 113 00:10:05.340 --> 00:10:11.340 So, now we're going to go into this rigid code. I just discussed Hayek's views. 114 00:10:11.340 --> 00:10:14.340 You can't get to the desired result, we've gone over that. 115 00:10:14.340 --> 00:10:25.340 So basically what he's arguing is that this civil code will tie the hand of the judiciary to the point where they can't get the outcome that they need. 116 00:10:25.340 --> 00:10:34.340 Well, let's start with Germany. Okay, Germany is a good place to start because it's the only civil law system that Hayek had anything good to say about. 117 00:10:34.340 --> 00:10:38.340 And what did he say about the German legal system? Thank God it wasn't the French legal system. 118 00:10:38.340 --> 00:10:42.340 That's the only good thing he said about the Germans. So let's see what we got here. 119 00:10:42.340 --> 00:10:48.340 Let's talk about the World War I reparations. I'm guessing you guys know at least a good deal about this. 120 00:10:48.340 --> 00:10:56.340 Hyperinflation through the roof. I mean, the hyperinflation that we're worried about now is nothing compared to what they had to go through through the day. 121 00:10:56.340 --> 00:11:02.340 As a matter of fact, I can see my last point here. Every single mortgage in Germany, every single one, 122 00:11:02.340 --> 00:11:15.340 If you combine them all, by the end of this recession, was worth less than one third of one U.S. penny, this creates enormous problems. 123 00:11:15.340 --> 00:11:28.340 So this first case that we're going to go through is based on section 242. What's 242? Good question. 124 00:11:28.340 --> 00:11:32.740 It deals with good faith and contracts, okay? 125 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:36.740 So this was, this basically said, you've got to perform in good faith, right? 126 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:41.540 If I offer to sell you my page of notes for $10, which I'm willing to do, 127 00:11:41.540 --> 00:11:45.440 and you say yes, I have to give you my notes, okay? 128 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:49.140 It's just that simple. And in fact, it was discussed. 129 00:11:49.140 --> 00:11:53.940 In the legislature, does this change? Circumstances doctrine. 130 00:11:53.940 --> 00:11:57.340 Everybody but six people said absolutely not. 131 00:11:57.340 --> 00:12:00.940 This is not to cover changed circumstances. 132 00:12:00.940 --> 00:12:10.740 One of the main reasons they changed their code 30 years prior to this crisis was that they thought the judge was getting a little too powerful. 133 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:17.340 He said, no, no, no, the judge, you're not supposed to, this is not a changed circumstances doctrine, your job is to discuss the code. 134 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:22.640 One legislator, which I found fascinating, one legislator said this though, he said, 135 00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:30.640 If you don't put in exchange circumstances doctrine, if you close that door, it's going to come in through the window. 136 00:12:30.640 --> 00:12:34.640 Let's see what happens. 137 00:12:34.640 --> 00:12:38.640 The course dramatically expanded Code 242 during this period. 138 00:12:38.640 --> 00:12:50.640 The case that I based this quote off of, this quote came from, is a person in Africa tried to pay back his mortgage very quickly after the inflation hit a pretty high rate. 139 00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:58.640 No, no, no, I don't want your money. I want way more than that. The bank said this. This money is now useless. 140 00:12:58.640 --> 00:13:07.640 No, no, no. We had a deal. I told you I'd pay you, let's say, a thousand marks. I gave you a thousand marks. I want my house. 141 00:13:07.640 --> 00:13:14.640 No, no, no. And they sue. So what do we see here? This is a direct quote from that case. 142 00:13:14.640 --> 00:13:29.640 The permissibility of revalorization can also be shown by way of an interpretation of the contract in which the court considers what the parties would have wanted if they had foreseen the possibility of a considerable degree of inflation. 143 00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:39.640 What they would have wanted. What is this code for? Not civil law code, a regular code for. It's code for change circumstances doctrine. 144 00:13:39.640 --> 00:13:49.640 It came in through the window. It came in through 242, even though the legislature explicitly told the courts not to. How odd. 145 00:13:49.640 --> 00:13:56.640 This is not anywhere in the code what they wanted to do. How does the legislature respond to this affront to their power? 146 00:13:56.640 --> 00:14:05.640 They endorsed the court by altering the code to add 18 circumstances doctrine. You don't need to read it unless you're really into German law. 147 00:14:05.640 --> 00:14:16.640 What does this mean? The court got to what the societal expectations wanted and the legislature endorsed this view. 148 00:14:16.640 --> 00:14:28.640 In a very famous case dealing with housing, and they said, I won't tell that story right now, I lied. 149 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:33.640 So difference between France and Germany. French courts are very weak. 150 00:14:33.640 --> 00:14:37.640 I'd argue that they're some of the weakest in the world. 151 00:14:37.640 --> 00:14:41.240 Their legislature is very strong. 152 00:14:41.240 --> 00:14:48.800 This is kind of why Hayek was very, very critical of the French legal system. 153 00:14:48.800 --> 00:14:50.120 So what happens here? 154 00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:54.200 So liability in France is somewhat similar to the United States in that we can base our 155 00:14:54.200 --> 00:15:00.040 liability for tort, which is personal harms, I guess if you will, based off of intentional 156 00:15:00.040 --> 00:15:03.160 or negligence. 157 00:15:03.160 --> 00:15:08.200 They also had strict liability for two, maybe three things, depending on how you interpreted 158 00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:09.560 the code. 159 00:15:09.560 --> 00:15:15.780 You have strict liability for collapsing buildings and strict liability for your animals. 160 00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:19.160 Those are directly in the code. 161 00:15:19.160 --> 00:15:25.240 The one that people were kind of maybe about was this weird code that said, you are also 162 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:28.380 strictly liable for things that are in your guard. 163 00:15:28.380 --> 00:15:30.720 Guard kind of means possession. 164 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:39.720 So think of it that way, this guard statute was only used for if my son hits you, you 165 00:15:39.720 --> 00:15:45.960 can come after me. Or if my employee hits you, you can come after me. So basically if 166 00:15:45.960 --> 00:15:54.340 you hold my kid liable, I'm liable to pay it. That's all that's ever been used for. 167 00:15:54.340 --> 00:16:01.100 So we have this new problem called the industrialization era, tons of steel moving around, what was 168 00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:06.620 happening was some of the makers of tugboats weren't building their boilers properly, 169 00:16:06.620 --> 00:16:10.380 and they were exploding and killing people, small problems. 170 00:16:10.380 --> 00:16:17.600 And so what happened was the widow would sue, the widow would say, hey you killed my husband, 171 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:22.240 you owe me some money, you gotta prove negligence, you gotta prove negligence, they could never 172 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:28.240 The people were crying out for strict liability in these circumstances. 173 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:34.240 They said, you have to do this. The times are changing. And the court said, it's not anywhere in the code. 174 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:40.240 Then came little tugboat Marie. This was the tugboat's name. 175 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:45.240 Same exact case I described, boiler explodes. No problem. 176 00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:51.240 What happened is that the court started to use guard-strict liability. 177 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:59.740 They said, you had guard to the corporation, the corporation had guard not only over the boat, but over that specific boiler. 178 00:16:59.740 --> 00:17:07.240 Please note that this is not at all what the definition of guard has ever meant in France. 179 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:14.740 The court used this anyway to dramatically expand the code. 180 00:17:14.740 --> 00:17:18.740 They wanted to get to the corporations and they found a way to do it. 181 00:17:18.740 --> 00:17:25.740 Now let's look at the next case. This is the tugboat Grange case. Same exact facts, only one major difference. 182 00:17:25.740 --> 00:17:32.740 An independent group said, and proved I guess to some degree, that the boat owner was not negligent. 183 00:17:32.740 --> 00:17:39.740 Now keep in mind, this doesn't matter under tugboat Murray. Under tugboat Murray, negligence does not matter. It is strict liability. 184 00:17:39.740 --> 00:17:51.740 What do we see? Opposite background. Opposite outcome. Why? 185 00:17:51.740 --> 00:18:04.740 Tugboat Marine ranks them up differently because they said, hey, you did everything you could. 186 00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:11.740 You did everything you could. It doesn't matter that you're strictly liable. You did nothing wrong. We're not going to hold you liable. 187 00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:20.740 Keep in mind that in one case they're saying negligence doesn't matter. In the next case, literally two days later, they're saying negligence does matter. 188 00:18:20.740 --> 00:18:28.740 Obviously, what they're doing is a balancing test, like we do in the United States, like we do in almost every country. 189 00:18:28.740 --> 00:18:32.740 How does the legislature respond? Once again, it's just the front of their power. 190 00:18:32.740 --> 00:18:36.740 Brandt surely will take a hard stand. No, they won't. 191 00:18:36.740 --> 00:18:41.740 What happens is that they say, we're going to create workman's compensation law. 192 00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:45.740 And I'm not here endorsing workman's compensation law. I want to make that very clear. 193 00:18:45.740 --> 00:18:49.740 I think that that's, you know, we can get to the cost benefits of that. 194 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:53.740 We can get to the cost benefits of that a little bit later. 195 00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:58.740 I'm just going to say that they make the, they make the, this makes it into the code. 196 00:18:58.740 --> 00:19:01.740 One second, if you'll. 197 00:19:05.740 --> 00:19:07.740 If the mic picks it up, that's good for the recording. 198 00:19:07.740 --> 00:19:10.740 Oh, I apologize. I didn't know it was being recorded. 199 00:19:13.740 --> 00:19:15.740 We'll just leave it like this then. I'll try to stay still. 200 00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:18.740 Alright, perfect. Sorry again, y'all. I'm not, I'm not very good. 201 00:19:18.740 --> 00:19:33.740 So, we see this exact same thing happen in car accidents. I'm not going to go through the whole history here, but it's important to note that the same exact transition happens. 202 00:19:33.740 --> 00:19:45.740 We see the code say one thing, the legislature expand it, then the legislature come about and say, okay, okay, you're right, you're right. 203 00:19:45.740 --> 00:19:54.740 So societal expectations, which is what Hayek says is important, is still being met perfectly fine in civil law country. 204 00:19:54.740 --> 00:20:01.740 I'm going to get back to that. I need to make a few more points because I'm perfect. 205 00:20:01.740 --> 00:20:04.740 Glad I practiced last night. 206 00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:12.740 Hayek makes one error that I really don't like. 207 00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:16.140 Up until this point, I've been disagreeing with Hayek, but I hope everybody understands 208 00:20:16.140 --> 00:20:21.220 that if I didn't respect Hayek so much, I wouldn't have taken the time to be here or 209 00:20:21.220 --> 00:20:24.140 to read his books. 210 00:20:24.140 --> 00:20:27.120 I am a Hayekian guy, okay? 211 00:20:27.120 --> 00:20:31.020 I don't want people to go and say, oh, he's wearing red, he must be one of them communists, 212 00:20:31.020 --> 00:20:32.020 all right? 213 00:20:32.020 --> 00:20:33.020 That's not it. 214 00:20:33.020 --> 00:20:34.460 I love Hayek. 215 00:20:34.460 --> 00:20:37.700 This is just one of those things that you have to do if you respect somebody is critique 216 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:38.700 it. 217 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:47.700 He makes one mistake though that kind of does bother me. He says that the code doesn't add certainty. 218 00:20:47.700 --> 00:20:56.700 Right? The code doesn't add certainty. The code was never meant to add certainty. 219 00:20:56.700 --> 00:21:02.700 The code was meant to give access to citizens. And that's actually why I support it. 220 00:21:02.700 --> 00:21:08.700 I don't have my laptop here, but it's the second most viewed website versus Google, don't get your heads there. 221 00:21:08.700 --> 00:21:14.700 And so the first, so the second thing I look at almost every day is the code. I'm always looking at it. 222 00:21:14.700 --> 00:21:21.700 You know, oh, you know, what happens in this case in Louisiana, what happens in that case in Louisiana? 223 00:21:21.700 --> 00:21:27.700 This is good. People should have access to laws. 224 00:21:27.700 --> 00:21:42.700 I, even as a law student, I ain't that much y'all, people should have the right to access the laws that we expect them to live by, if we expect them to live by it, I'm not saying that's good or bad, my paper doesn't address that topic. 225 00:21:42.700 --> 00:21:54.700 So I'm going to go a little bit now, my paper and others in context, Hayek has been absolutely destroyed by, for his economic, for his law theories, this quote right here kind of shows, I'm not going to read it because I don't have all that much time, 226 00:21:54.700 --> 00:22:08.700 It basically kind of gives him some ill impression saying, oh geez, if Hayek hadn't been so biased, his theory would have been way better. 227 00:22:08.700 --> 00:22:17.700 And people really have attacked Hayek for his legal views. 228 00:22:17.700 --> 00:22:22.700 By the way, who published this kind of harsh critique? The Cato Institute. 229 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:26.260 This isn't in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pieces. This isn't in the New York Times. 230 00:22:27.980 --> 00:22:32.060 The libertarian groups have done quite a bit of damage to Hayek as well. 231 00:22:32.660 --> 00:22:39.140 So my point that I want people to think away from this is Hayek is still right if you look at his premise. 232 00:22:40.900 --> 00:22:46.540 His main premise in rules and order was that people should be expected to live by the laws they expect. 233 00:22:47.300 --> 00:22:50.740 Okay, let me break it down a little bit, very little bit. 234 00:22:52.700 --> 00:23:02.700 If I contract with you $10 for my notes, offer's still good, what should happen is we should have to live by the rules that we expected to take place. 235 00:23:02.700 --> 00:23:08.700 So I should have to give this to you. That was my word. My word is my bond. I should give this to you. 236 00:23:08.700 --> 00:23:14.700 The rules governing that transaction should be the ones that we all believe will rule the day. 237 00:23:14.700 --> 00:23:21.700 This point has been somewhat lost in all of the papers, and I'm making a very strong point to make sure it's not lost in mine, 238 00:23:21.700 --> 00:23:29.620 And that although I think he was way off on history, and I think he was, his overall point 239 00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:34.020 is still correct. 240 00:23:34.020 --> 00:23:36.780 And that's kind of what I want to leave y'all with. 241 00:23:36.780 --> 00:23:44.060 Oh, and this point right here, I mean, if they look back at my work, you know, in fifty 242 00:23:44.060 --> 00:23:51.060 I've lived many years and I was wrong on two things that aren't even at all related to my main point. 243 00:23:51.060 --> 00:23:54.060 I'll have lived a very good life. 244 00:23:54.060 --> 00:23:59.060 Although we kind of like to say, oh geez, he's wrong about this too, he's wrong about this too. 245 00:23:59.060 --> 00:24:04.060 We need to also remember this is a man who fought back socialism at every single point he could. 246 00:24:04.060 --> 00:24:07.060 He fought back central planning at every single point he could. 247 00:24:07.060 --> 00:24:12.060 This disagreement should not define him or me, mainly him. 248 00:24:12.060 --> 00:24:23.060 He was a good, great economist and a great jurist, and other than that I'll turn it over with a minute to spare, not bad.