Does altruism justify privileges?

Enrico Colombatto () and Valerio Tavormina ()

ICER Working Papers from ICER - International Centre for Economic Research

Abstract: This article discusses whether altruism justifies ad-hoc legislation with reference to three different contexts. One is defined by the libertarian notion of liberty, a second framework corresponds to the egalitarian vision, and a third one originates from social-contract theory. It is shown that current legislation is rather ambiguous and sometimes even contradictory. By and large, the common-law view tends to favour the libertarian approach, while the civil-law visions are closer to what one might expect from social-contract theory, where the letter of the law is often questioned by the academic community and by the judiciary, and decisions eventually follow the judges' discretionary power.

Keywords: Altruism; libertarianism; egalitarianism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 K19 K39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-law
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:icr:wpicer:01-2015

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