LIEBERATION THEOLOGY

Francis Lieber on the Sources of Civil Liberty (Steven Alan Samson, Humanitas)

Among the European visitors whose observations of early American life found a ready audience was a young emigre who consorted with the leading scholars,
jurists, and literati of his day. Unaccountably neglected for over a century, Francis Lieber (1798-1872), one of the first university-trained German scholars to migrate to America, served as a bridge between the intellectual and political cultures of Germany, England, and America. While cultivating an astonishing range of activities and interests, Lieber helped lay the foundation of academic political science in America and promoted its practical application to public affairs. His theory of institutional liberty, which attributes the rise of civil liberty to the development of an increasingly integrated complex of self-governing institutions, may be his most original contribution to the political science literature. [...]

[A] major dimension of Lieber's thought is theological. Repeated references to God, creation, and Christianity sprinkle the >Manual of Political Ethics and, more casually, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government. Far from being incidental to the life of society, Christianity holds a central place that justifies the inclusion of religious instruction in public colleges: "The Christian religion is interwoven with all the institutions which surround us and in which we have our social being. The Christian religion has found its way into a thousand laws, and has generated a thousand others. It can no more be excluded than the common law, or our language."

Lieber, a professing Episcopalian, adhered to a dynamic view of divine creation, believing that humanity is providentially designed for a higher destiny. A pervading theocentricity is typical of Lieber's academic writing. While discussing the importance of "calmness of mind" and trust in politics, Lieber casually added: "Great and calm souls look upon their God, who when He created the rivers and the sea, knew that man would invent bridges, boats, and sails; who when he called the earth into existence and placed man upon it, knew that the plough would be contrived in due time."

It was Lieber's firm conclusion that human nature reaches its fullest amplitude of expression in a state of civilized interdependence-in cultural maturity-rather than primitive isolation. He focused on the dynamic interplay of man's individuality and his sociality, involving the conjugal union, the family, language, and the institution of property, to explain the rise and progress of civilization. "Man was either made to be stationary or for civilization; a medium is not imaginable. . . . Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state, because adapted to and effected by his nature." Lieber attributed cultural and developmental differences primarily to tractable historical influences and as a rule was wary of invidious racial or biological comparisons. [...]

Lieber identified three major characteristics of the development of the modern era. The first is "national polity" or the nation-state. The second is "the general endeavor to define more clearly, and to extend more widely, human rights and civil liberty." The third is the simultaneous flowering of many leading nations, rather than a single imperial hegemon, under the aegis of international law and "in the bonds of one common moving civilization." Significantly, he believed that "there will be no obliteration of nationalities" in this commonwealth of nations. Internationalization is merely the latest manifestation of an "all-pervading law of interdependence."

Each of these themes converges in Lieber's theory of institutional liberty.

Institutional Liberty

Lieber apparently dropped both hamarchy and autarchy from his political lexicon by the time he wrote On Civil Liberty and Self-Government, substituting the terms "self-government" and "absolutism." He wrote that "there is no formula by which liberty can be solved, nor are there laws by which liberty can be decreed, without other aids." These prerequisites may be acquired only through practice. "How then is real and essential self-government, in the service of liberty, to be obtained and to be perpetuated? There is no other means than by a vast system of institutions, whose number supports the whole, as the many pillars support the rotunda of our capitol."

Lieber defined institution as "a system or body of usages, laws, or regulations of extensive and recurring operation, containing within itself an organism by which it effects its own independent action, continuance, and generally its own farther development. Its object is to generate, effect, regulate, or sanction a succession of acts, transactions, or productions of a peculiar kind or class." Self-government is one of its chief properties. It "insures perpetuity, and renders development possible." Otherwise, history "sinks to mere anecdotal chronology. . . . Impulsiveness without institutions, enthusiasm without an organism, may produce a brilliant period indeed, but it is generally like the light of a meteor. That period of Portuguese history which is inscribed with the names of Prince Henry the Navigator, Camoens, and Albuquerque is raiant with brilliant deeds, but how short a day between long and dreary nights!"

Lieber extended this idea to include entire systems of institutions. Much of his magnum opus is devoted to a comprehensive list of what he considered to be the constituents of civil liberty. This lengthy section is introduced by a chapter entitled "Anglican Liberty".

Lieber's characterization of these civil liberties reinforces his view that they depend upon well-articulated and firmly established political and social institutions. The following partial list drawn from "Anglican and Gallican Liberty" and On Civil Liberty and Self-Government is organized simply for the sake of convenience.

Briefly, the following are protected: persons generally; public and private communication; free production and exchange; religion or worship; lawful opposition to the administration; the minority against the majority; aliens and foreigners; freedom of the people to adopt the government they think best; free choice of residence; freedom of emigration and immigration; and the rights of petition, assembly, bearing arms, and resisting unlawful authority or unlawful demands.

The following are prohibited: extra-governmental power, domination by the central government, unconsented legislation, quartering soldiers in private homes without consent of Parliament, and dictation by one or many.

Finally, the institutional safeguards of liberty include popular control over public funds, self-taxation, judicial review, trial by jury, trial by common courts, due process, publicity concerning political and judicial activities, submission of the army to the legislature, the parliamentary veto, responsibility of ministers and other officers, dependence of the executive on legislative appropriations, restraints on the war-making and peace-making power, independence of the judiciary, the common law principle of precedent, and supremacy of the law.

In summing up these principles and institutions, it appears that they are guarantees of the security of individual property, of personal liberty, and individual humanity, of the security of society against the assaults or interference of public power, of the certainty with which public opinion shall become public will in an organic way, and protection of the minority. Many of these have originated, nearly all of them have first been developed, in England. . . .

Thus modern liberty-that is, institutional liberty-consists in "practical provisions and political contrivances." Herein lies the difference between medieval and modern liberty. Medieval rulers isolated political independence by chartering freedom. In modern times, governments are chartered by the people themselves. Modern liberty requires an integration of these principles and institutions in custom and public consciousness so that they enjoy the protection of public opinion. As D. J. McCord, Jr., remarked in his review of Lieber's Manual of Political Ethics: "The progress of civilization, in all christian countries at least, has created a public opinion, which now protects the personal liberty of men in a greater degree than formerly, regardless of the form of government."

The chapter on "American Liberty" adds the following to the list of Anglican liberties: republicanism, federalism, separation of church and state, political equality, popular elections, separation of powers, judicial review, impeachment, a written constitution, freedom of navigable rivers, and several others.

Lieber maintained that these liberties were still in a "nascent stage" on the European continent, which had gone through "periods of absorbing and life-destroying centralization." Instead, a prudential balance of local and central initiative is required. It resolves the age-old dilemma of unity and diversity-the problem of the One and the Many-through a fluid mixture of what he called individualism and socialism, reason and tradition. Human nature and society should be regarded as both singular and plural:

Two elements constitute all human progress, historical development and abstract reasoning. It results from the very nature of man, whom God has made an individual and a social being. His historical development results from the continuity of society. Without it, without traditional knowledge and institutions, without education, man would no longer be man; without individual reasoning, without bold abstraction, there would be no advancement. Now, single men, entire societies, whole periods, will incline more to the one or to the other element, and both present themselves occasionally in individuals and entire epochs as caricatures. One-sidedness is to be shunned in this as in all other cases. . . .

Institutional self-government is distinguished by its tenacity, assimilative power, and transmissible character. It can be successfully exported. But it increases only slowly and it depends on the conscientious willingness of citizens to obey lawful exercises of authority. It is threatened by "sejunction" (schism) if local interests begin to dominate, as in the Netherlands after it had won independence, and it may perish if the institutions themselves become corrupted or degenerate. Lieber also recognized that evil institutions may thrive for a time, and lamented the malignant growth of slavery as a threat to American liberty.

At the opposite pole from institutional liberty is the fusion of legislative and executive functions that Lieber called, variously, "the power," "Caesarism," and "Rousseauism." He examined the perplexing notion of an "elected despot" in two chapters on "Imperatorial Sovereignty" and found the ultimate form of this "democratic absolutism" in the Bonapartist claim that the emperor is the embodiment of the general will. In this ultimate expression of Gallican liberty, Lieber, echoing Edmund Burke, clearly had in mind the French Revolution and its aftermath.

It is the particular genius of the secular democratic State though that it seeks to annihilate all intervening institutions and to aggrandize all authority to itself. Since the most powerful and coherent of these non-governmental instutions is the Chuirch--which exercises a uniquely persuasive counter-claim to authority over men--the State is particularly hostile to religion. As Europe has shown, once the Church is out of the way the field is clear for the oxymoronic reign of "Gallican liberty". Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2003 08:04 PM