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
