The Ancient Near East. 

The Code of Hammurabi
The Laws

22: If a seignior committed robbery and has been caught, that seignior shall be put to death.^1a

" . . . Thou shalt not kill. . . Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house . . . " [Exodus 20:13-17].^1a

"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" [Proverbs 22:7].^1b*

Tao Te Ching. 

"The more prohibitions there are . . 
The poorer the people will be. . . 
The more laws are promulgated,
The more thieves and bandits there will be." [Ch. 57]^1a

"In the governance of empire everything difficult must be dealt with while it is still easy,
Everything great must be dealt with while it is small." [Ch. 63]^1b

The Analects.

"The Master said: 'At hearing legal proceedings I am no different from anybody else, but what is surely necessary is to bring it about that there is no litigation.'" [12:13]^1a

Mencius.

"' . . . Unless they have a constant livelihood, the common people will never have constant minds. And without constant minds, they�ll wander loose and wild. They'll stop at nothing, and soon cross the law.'" [I.7]^1a

The New Testament.

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . 
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." [St. Matthew 22:37-40].^1a

" . . . [T]he law entered, that the offense might abound" [Romans 5:20].^1b

"But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;
Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners . . . , for murderers . . .
For whoremongers . . . , for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons . . . " [1 Timothy 1:8-10].^1c*

" . . . [T]he priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. . . the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of better hope did . . . " [Hebrews 8:12 and 19].^1d*

" . . . [A] multiplicity of laws often furnishes excuses for vice . . ."^1a

Behemoth.

"B. What did they mean by the fundamental laws of the nation?
A. Nothing but to abuse the people."^1a

The Spirit of the Laws.

"As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war."^1a

Philosophical Dictionary.

"Equality. What does a dog owe to a dog, and a horse to a horse? Nothing, no animal depends on his like; but man having received the ray of divinity called reason, what is the result? Slavery throughout almost the whole world."^1a

"Hell. As soon as men lived in society they must have noticed that some guilty men eluded the severity of the law."^1b

"On laws. I was told that there are laws among thieves, and also in war."^1c

"Tyranny. The sovereign who knows no laws but his own whim, who seizes the property of his subjects, and who then enlist them to seize that of his neighbours is called a tyrant."^1d

"As we trace the march of inequality in these various revolutions, we find that the establishment of law and the right of property was the first stage, the institution of the magistrate the second, and the transformation of legitimate into arbitrary power the third and last. Thus, the status of rich and poor was sanctioned in the first age, that of strong and weak in the second, and in the third that of master and slave, the ultimate degree of inequality to which all the others at last lead until new revolutions dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to legitimacy."^1a

The Wealth of Nations.

"It is not . . . difficult to foresee which of the two parties must . . . have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.  The masters . . . can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen."^1a

"Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature."^1a*

Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.

" . . . [T]he wickedness . . . of the human heart is the propensity of the will to maxims which neglect the incentives springing from the moral law in favor of others which are not moral."^2a*

"The evil is radical, because it corrupts the grounds of all maxims . . . "^2b*

The Metaphysics of Morals.

"Right is . . . the sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom. "^5a

" . . . [E]thics is the science of how one is under obligation without regard for any possible external lawgiving."^5b

" . . . [A] human being regarded as a person, that is, as the subject of a morally practical reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person (homo noumenon) he is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of others or even to his own ends, but as as an end in himself; that is, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings in the world. "^5c*

"When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when property is made a pretence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold property, and provokes indignation and tumult . . . "^1a

"Jefferson also said: 'The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. . .'"^1a

" . . . [T]he Rule of Law . . . means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand - rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers . . . "^1a

The Virtue of Selfishness.

"Without property rights, no other rights are possible."^1b

"All credit transactions are contractual agreements. . . Only a very small part of the gigantic network of credit transactions ever ends up in court, but the entire network is made possible by the existence of the courts, and would collapse overnight without that protection."^1d*

Technology Management and Society.

"The first great code of law, that of Hammurabi, almost four thousand years ago, would still be applicable to a good deal of legal business in today's highly developed, industrial society."^1a

The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt.

"Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law."^1a

"Absolute domination by the law does not represent liberty, but no more does absolute anarchy. . . Freedom exists only in a world where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not possible. Without law there is no freedom."^1b

" . . . I see in Kant the complete philosophical manifestation that the supreme evil is not the gross infraction of a duty but the malice that makes pass for virtue what is virtue's betrayal. The evil of evil is the fraudulent justification of the maxim by apparent conformity with law - it is the semblance of morality."^1a

" . . . Saint Paul has said what is essential: sin is not transgression; it is the link between law and covetousness, on the basis of which there is transgression; sin is remaining within the narrow economy of the law, where the commandment excites covetousness. The contrary of sin is not morality but faith."^1b

" . . . [O]ur comparative ignorance of the laws of society and history is due not only to the great complexity of human affairs, but also to the very prejudice that there are no laws of history -- a prejudice suspect of being allied to powerful social (or antisocial) interests that are vitally interested in preventing deep insights into the social mechanism. Et pour cause! People who are able to take the social mechanism apart in theory may wish to change it in practice, and -- what is more dangerous for those who live on the persistence of fossil social forms -- such men may even succeed in their attempt."^1a*

A Theory of Justice.

" . . . [E]xtorted promises are void ab initio."^1a*

" . . . [I]n order to make a binding promise, one must be fully conscious, in a rational frame of mind, and know the meaning of the operative words, their use in making promises, . . . Furthermore, these words must be spoken freely or voluntarily, when one is not subject to threats or coercion, and in situations where one has a reasonably fair bargaining position . . ."^1b

" . . . [W]hile American industry was spending about $76 billion each year on research and development as of 1992, the National Association of Manufacturers estimated that this same industrial sector was spending $118 billion on outside legal services. . . If we continue to pay roughly one and one-half times as much on litigation as we do on the creation of new wealth in American industry - in other words, research and development - we are on a trajectory to economic disaster."^1*

AAAS Science and Technology Yearbook 1999. " . . . [I]n my own area of physics and the physical sciences, we have the arrogance to believe that with the tools of mathematics and fewer than 20 natural laws, we can aspire to eventually understand the entire natural universe and its evolution. I have no idea how many laws the average lawyer deals with on a regular basis, but most certainly that number is vastly greater than 20."²

"What can be done when government itself becomes lawless, flouting the very Constitution and congressional laws that it is duty-bound to uphold? This is one of the most important yet neglected problems of self-governance of our time."^1c MONTESQUIEU

"The principal call is almost primitive in its simplicity. It is a call for corporations to stop stealing, stop deceiving, stop corrupting politicians with money, stop monopolizing, stop poisoning the earth, air and water, stop selling dangerous products, stop exposing workers to cruel hazards, stop tyrannizing people of conscience within the company and start respecting long-range survival needs and rights of present and future generations."^1d

"The problem of corporate power comes in three expressions -- misfeasance (the improper use of proper power), malfeasance (the use of improper power) and non-feasance (the non-use of proper power)."^1f

"With 99 percent of all contracts not negotiated -- e.g., insurance policies, credit card conditions, mortgage instruments, shrink-wrap licenses, and installment loan agreements -- sellers demand that consumers sign on the dotted line and give up rights, remedies, and bargaining."^1g

Financial Darwinists chose to interpret "Natural Selection or the Survival of the Fittest"^1a to mean that their financial fitness can be improved by acquiring "advantages, however slight," over others, and that the subjugation of others was natural. It did not matter whether the advantages were merited or not; after all, Darwin wrote "[m]an selects only for his own good."^1b Even more importantly, Ecclesiastes revealed,-- and this was pointed out by Hayek --, "that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill . . ." [Ecclesiastes 9:11].

The strategy would therefore be simple. All financial Darwinists have to do is: 

MANIPULATE THE RULE OF LAW TO GIVE THE MONEY TRUST NET ADVANTAGES, HOWEVER SLIGHT, OVER THE CITIZEN -- AS BORROWER, AS WORKER, AS EMPLOYEE, AS TENANT, AS IMMIGRANT, ETC.,^1c -- THEN BLAME UNJUST OR EVIL OUTCOMES ON "TIME AND CHANCE."¹

¹ The Holy Bible. The New Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1957.
^a St. Matthew 22:37-40.
^b Romans 5:20.
^c 1 Timothy 1:8-10.
^d Hebrews 8:12 and 19.

¹ Thomas Hobbes. Behemoth or the Long Parliament. Edited by Ferdinand T�nnies, with an Introduction by Stephen Holmes. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
^a Dialog 1, at 54.

² Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Leviathan (1651). Edited with an Introduction by C.B. Macpherson. C.B. Macpherson, 1968. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1985.
^a Of Common-Wealth, at 385.

¹ Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Translated by Franklin Philip. Edited with an Introduction by Patrick Coleman. Franklin Philip, 1994. Patrick Coleman, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
^a Part II, at 78-79.

² Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on Political Economy and The Social Contract. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Christopher Betts. Christopher Betts, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
^a Book I, at 45.

¹ Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated and Analyzed by H.J. Paton. New York, NY: Harper and Row, Publishers, Incorporated. (Originally published under the title The Moral Law, Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., London, 1948.)
^a The Formula of the Law of Nature, at 89.

² Immanuel Kant. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, with an essay by John R. Silber. La Salle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1934. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1960.
^a Concerning the Propensity to Evil in Human Nature, at 23-27.
^b Man is Evil by Nature, at 27-34.

⁵ Immanuel Kant. The Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Translated and edited by Mary Gregor. With an Introduction by Roger J. Sullivan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
^a Introduction to the Doctrine of Right, at 24.
^b Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue, at 168.
^c The Doctrine of Virtue, at 186.

¹ F.A. Hayek (1899-1992). The Road to Serfdom. Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. Introduction by Milton Friedman. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago, 1944, 1972, 1994.
^a Economic Control and Totalitarianism, at 98-99.

² F.A. Hayek. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice. F.A. Hayek, 1976. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
^a The Game of Catallaxy, at 120.

¹ D. Allan Bromley. The President's Scientists: Reminiscences of a White House Science Advisor (Yale University Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Rebuilding the Office of Science and Technology Policy, at 48.

² D. Allan Bromley. AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 1999. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science. Chapter 10: Science and the Law, at http://www.aaas.org/spp/yearbook/chap10.htm. (Based on remarks made August 2, 1998 during the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.)