The State and the Rule of Law in a Mixed Economy

Abstract

The State and the Rule of Law in a Mixed Economy is, like all Professor Friedmann's writing, the work of a first-class scholar, drawn from a mature and deeply considered philosophy of law. The book consists of his Tagore Lectures, delivered at Calcutta in 1970. They address the law for controlling the "mixed" economies of modem democracies. In the first instance, the lectures summarize for an Indian audience some of the lessons Professor Friedmann draws from the Anglo-American experience in reconciling both personal freedom and "the rule of law" with the steady and perhaps accelerating recent growth of the public sector in the economic and social life of democratic societies. While the book is rich in aperçus of interest to all who labor in the vineyard, it has a quality of sketchiness nearly inevitable in lectures that deal with a wide range of problems. Although it is surely unfair to criticize a man for not having written the book his reviewer would have preferred, I should nonetheless note my regret that in preparing his lectures for publication Professor Friedmann did not substantially enlarge the texts he delivered in Calcutta. A more thorough treatment of the important questions he poses and, above all, a treatment that gave full weight to problems of economic and social policy generated by the processes to which he alludes, would have made his book invaluable.