Law is, generally, a system of rules which are enforced through social institutions to govern

behaviour.[2] Laws can be made by legislatures through legislation (resulting in statutes), the
executive through decrees and regulations, or judges through binding precedents (normally
in common law jurisdictions). Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including (in
some jurisdictions) arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the
normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution (written
or unwritten) and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, and society in
various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.
A general distinction can be made between (a) civil law jurisdictions (including canon and socialist
law), in which the legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates their laws, and
(b) common law systems, where judge-made bindingprecedents are accepted. Historically, religious
laws played a significant role even in settling of secular matters, which is still the case in some
religious communities, particularly Jewish, and some countries, particularly Islamic. Islamic Sharia
law is the world's most widely used religious law.[3]
The adjudication of the law is generally divided into two main areas referred to as (i) Criminal law
and (ii) Civil law. Criminal lawdeals with conduct that is considered harmful to social order and in
which the guilty party may be imprisoned or fined. Civil law(not to be confused with civil law
jurisdictions above) deals with the resolution of lawsuits (disputes) between individuals or
organisations. These resolutions seek to provide a legal remedy (often monetary damages) to the
winning litigant. Under civil law, the following specialties, among others, exist: Contract law regulates
everything from buying a bus ticket to trading onderivatives markets. Property law regulates the
transfer and title of personal property and real property. Trust law applies to assets held for
investment and financial security. Tort law allows claims for compensation if a person's property
is harmed.Constitutional law provides a framework for the creation of law, the protection of human
rights and the election of political representatives. Administrative law is used to review the decisions
of government agencies. International law governs affairs between sovereign states in activities
ranging from trade to military action. To implement and enforce the law and provide services to the
public by public servants, a government's bureaucracy, military, and police are vital. While all these
organs of the state are creatures created and bound by law, an independent legal profession and a
vibrant civil society inform and support their progress[citation needed].
Law provides a rich source of scholarly inquiry into legal history, philosophy, economic
analysis and sociology. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness,
and justice. There is an old saying that 'all are equal before the law.'. The author Anatole
France said in 1894, "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under
bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."[4] Writing in 350 BC,
the Greek philosopher Aristotle declared, "Therule of law is better than the rule of any
individual."[5] Mikhail Bakunin said: "All law has for its object to confirm and exalt into a system the

exploitation of the workers by a ruling class".[6] Cicero said "more law, less justice".[7] Marxist doctrine
asserts that law will not be required once the state has withered away

A law is a rule of social conduct enforced by the government. In distinction to all other social rules and practices,
laws are backed up by the government's legal monopoly on the use of physical force. Breaking the rules of a
business, fraternal organization, educational institution, or other voluntary association may meet with disapproval,
loss of privileges, or expulsion, but only a government can enforce its rules by subjecting those who break them to
fines, imprisonment, and, ultimately, death. (Any fines levied by private organizations are enforceable only via the
government's enforcement of contracts.)
In order to define a standard for evaluating law, one must refer to the purpose of government. In "The Nature of
Government," Ayn Rand writes: "Since the protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of a
government, it is the only proper subject of legislation: all laws must be based on individual rights and aimed at their
protection."1 Rights can be violated only by the initiation of physical force. A proper, moral government limits its
use of physical force to retaliating against those who initiate its use, in violation of rights.
By its monopoly on the use of physical force, a government is potentially the greatest rights-violator in a society.
The threat to rights posed by private criminals is small compared to the threat posed by governments, as the mass
slaughters perpetrated by statist governments throughout history testify. It is essential, therefore, that the
government's use of physical force be "rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or caprice
should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the laws as its only motive power."2
This is the basis of the need for objective law. Laws must be objective in both derivation and form. And in both
respects, "objective" refers to that which is based on a rational consideration of the relevant facts---as opposed to the
subjective, the arbitrary, the whim-based.
An objectively derived law is one stemming not from the whim of legislators or bureaucrats but from a rational
application of the principle of individual rights. Rights tie law to reality, because they are a recognition of a basic,
unalterable fact, i.e., of "the conditions required by man's nature for his proper survival." 3
For instance, a law against murder is clearly derived from the right to one's life, whereas a law compelling military
service is not derived from any right, but from the alleged needs of a collective, in disdain for the individual's right
to his life.
A law against theft is objectively derived from the right to property; a law guaranteeing "free" (i.e., tax supported)
medical benefits is not---it violates the rights of those whose wealth is to be expropriated to provide such benefits.
That a law is objectively derived does not guarantee that it is a correct application of the principle of individual
rights---errors in application are possible. But it does mean that the law's validity is defended by a rational attempt to
apply the principle of individual rights, rather than by appeal to such notions as the "public interest," the "general
welfare," or "community standards."
Contemporary legal philosophers, politicians, judges, and bureaucrats believe that the purpose of law is to strike
#7 Fall 1990 Page 2
an ever-shifting balance between the wishes and demands of various groups. In this chaos, no principles are
invoked, only such undefined and indefinable notions as "the public interest" or, worse, "the needs of the
environment." No stable, principled legal code can be derived from notions detached from reality. Such notions

require a policy as "flexible," and "evolving" as the dizzying swirl of intellectual fashion that generates them.
Ultimately, only the principle of individual rights, which is grounded in the factual requirements of man's survival,
can provide the basis for law that is objectively defined and objectively applied.
As the law must be objective in its source, so it must be objective in its form: objective laws are clearly defined,
consistent, unambiguous, stable, and as straightforward and simple as possible. They are also impartial and
universal, in the sense of applying to all individuals as individuals rather than as members of any race, creed, class
or other collective.
In every regard, the law must be adapted to its essential goal: predictability. "[M]en must know clearly, and in
advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty
they will incur if they commit it."4
The ideal is to make the laws of man like the laws of nature: firm, stable impersonal absolutes.
Like the laws of nature, proper laws are contextual. The laws of physics do not consist of sweeping, out-of-context
pronouncements, such as "Heavy objects fall---period," a notion which would be contradicted by the flight of birds
or airplanes. Rather, physics identifies the fact that all objects are subject to a gravitational force---as one factor in
the total context of forces influencing their behavior. Likewise, an objective law does not declare, for instance,
"Thou shalt not kill---period," a notion which would equate murder and self-defense.
Nor does the law against murder ignore such distinctions as that between first-degree and second-degree murder.
Objective law makes legal distinctions according to context and circumstance---i.e., according to the specific nature
of the act (including its level of intent) and of the surrounding facts---not according to the race of the accused, the
eloquence of his pleas for "mercy," or the mood of a judge.
Objective laws are abstract statements. As such they have to be applied to the specifics of a given concrete case.
This application is not automatic, and in many instances a proper application requires a great deal of time and effort.
The opponents of objective law use these facts to support their claim that when it comes to law, there are no hardand-fast rules, no absolutes. But the laws of nature also are abstract, they also stand in need of application, and
scientists often disagree about what accounts for observed phenomena or what the results of an experiment will be.
This does not make the laws of nature non-absolute, flexible,
or subject to anyone's whim.
(Philosophically, such attacks on objective law reflect the false alternative of the intrinsicversus the subjective: if the
answers to legal issues are not self-evident, then, it is claimed, no objective answers exist and we may as well go by
our emotions. To identify this approach is to refute it.)
Not only must a legal code have the impersonal absolutism of a law of nature, it must also have the clarity and
precision of a properly drafted contract. A contract that states, "In return for paying me $100, I will do something
nice for you someday," is no contract. Likewise, a law that states, "Obey community standards regarding obscenity,"
is no law, but a grant of arbitrary power.
A crucial element in the understanding and defense of objective law is provided by Ayn Rand's identification
that physical force is the only basic means of violating rights. "It is only by means of physical force that one man
can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel
him to act against his own rational judgment." 5 Law that is defined in terms of acts of physical force, notes Leonard
Peikoff,
stands in stark contrast to laws forbidding crimes which are not defined in terms
of specific physical acts; e.g., laws against "blasphemy," "obscenity," "immorality,"
"restraint of trade," or "unfair profits." In all such examples, even when the terms
are philosophically definable, it is not possible to know from the statement of the
law what existential acts are forbidden. Men are reduced to guessing; they have

to try to enter the mind of the legislator and divine his intentions, ideas,
value-judgments, philosophy---which, given the nature of such legislation,
are riddled with caprice. In practice, the meaning of such laws is decided
arbitrarily, on a case-by-case basis, by tyrants, bureaucrats, or judges,
according to methods that no one, including the interpreters, can define or predict.6
A criminal who initiates physical force is attempting to enact a nightmare perversion of metaphysics: the
#7 Fall 1990 Page 3
primacy of consciousness. He seeks to make his arbitrary will, not the facts of reality, the absolute to which his
victim must adjust. Non-objective law is based on the same premise: it demands that the citizen focus on and accept
the unaccountable will of the law's interpreter
instead of the facts of reality. Objective law is based on the primacy of existence; it reflects not anyone's will but
facts. In this sense, objective law is passive: certain definite areas are clearly marked "off limits," and unless one
crosses the line, the law respects and protects one's freedom of choice. Non-objective law is active; it is a beast in
motion. Its "flexibility" makes it the indispensable tool of dictatorships.
"It is a grave error," writes Ayn Rand, "to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws
which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable;
men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that
breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable." 7
The dictator's concern is power. To have power over someone is to be able to make him do what one wishes, not by
offering him a value as an inducement, not merely when his wishes happen to coincide with one's own, but simply
because one wishes it. The power-luster seeks proof that you are acting from orders, not merely in accordance
with orders. To obtain that proof, he must constantly and arbitrarily shift his orders: "there is no way to please him;
when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake
of destruction."8
Objective law is men's protection against power-lust. Objective law does not require submitting to anyone's will; it
exists to prevent others from substituting their will, their plans, their judgment for one's own.
Although the function of objective law is to protect individual rights, the proper means for securing this protection is
by bringing a civil or criminal action after the fact, not by prior restraint. If a plaintiff can prove that someone's
planned action poses an objective threat of damage to him, he can sue for an injunction to prevent it. But the general
possibility of human wrongdoing provides no grounds for requiring a given individual to prove he will not engage in
it. Individuals are separate entities who possess free will and make their own independent choices. Therefore, the
wrongful actions of some men do not cast the slightest suspicion upon the activities of others. This is another
manifestation of the individualism embodied in objective law.
Accordingly, all regulatory agencies---all the alphabet commissions and boards from the original ICC right through
the latest "environmental" agencies---are inherently non-objective by virtue of being regulatory agencies.
Regulatory agencies deal in preventive law, law that treats men as guilty in advance, requiring them to satisfy the
government that they will notbring about a certain result, in the absence of any specific evidence that they will do
so. Thus, businesses have to satisfy the FDA that they will not sell adulterated food and drugs, satisfy the SEC that
they will not "take advantage of" investors, satisfy the FTC that they will not "attempt to monopolize," satisfy the
EPA that they will not "injure the environment," satisfy the EEOC that they will not "discriminate" in hiring . . . and
so on, without limit.
The premise of regulatory law is: since some individuals may act irrationally and irresponsibly, all must submit to
supervision. Thus regulatory law sacrifices virtue to vice. Objective law is designed to protect the very thing
regulatory law crushes: independence.

Objectivity is needed not only for the law itself, but also in regard to every governmental activity, from the conduct
of the police to election procedures. Legal objectivity, in the widest sense, includes objective methods of enacting
law (the legislative process), objective methods of interpreting, constitutionally validating, and applying the law (the
judicial process), and objective methods of enforcing the law (the executive process). Each of these is a wide and
complex domain requiring multi-volume treatises to specify proper procedures; but the required work has essentially
been done already: the original American system of constitutionally limited government, together with 18th century
English common law and rules of parliamentary procedure, formed a nearly perfect system from the standpoint of
objectivity.
***
Ayn Rand's contribution to the theory of objective law is threefold. First, she provided a rational, objective basis for
individual rights. Second, by identifying the fact that only physical force can violate rights, she made objective the
basis for establishing when a right has been violated.
Third, by developing a full philosophic theory of objectivity as such and then connecting this theory of objectivity
with the need for government, she solidified the Lockean defense of that institution, showing why the law has to be
objectively defined, interpreted, applied, and enforced: "A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of
physical force under objective control ---i.e., under objectively defined laws.