From commutative justice to the system of natural liberty: continuities and tensions in Adam Smith's Work

Abstract

This paper examines the notion of justice in Adam Smith’s two major works —The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations— with the aim of elucidating the theoretical and conceptual reasons behind the incompleteness of his projected science of jurisprudence. It argues that Smith adopted from the classical tradition the notion of commutative justice, establishing the laws protecting life, person, possessions, and property as a sacred and irreducible legal core. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, justice appears as a coercive and necessary virtue, grounded in the instinctive approval of punishment in response to harm; in The Wealth of Nations, these same laws constitute the necessary, though not sufficient, condition of the system of natural liberty and commercial progress. The analysis suggests that this irreducible legal core was assumed —without further questioning or foundation— by nineteenth-century political economy.