Scott, Paul Francis (2013) Freedom, law, and the republic. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4941/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/
[email protected] Freedom, Law, and the Republic Paul Francis Scott LLB, LLM Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD School of Law College of Social Sciences University of Glasgow July 2013 Abstract This thesis considers the question of human freedom through the lens of the revival of republican political theory that has taken place in recent decades. In its first part, it distinguishes between different strands of that revival and argues that one of these presents a variant of human freedom which more adequately captures the human condition than does the ideal of freedom traditionally endorsed by liberal thought. It then considers that question of freedom in relation to very fundamental questions of power, law, and the reasons for which we accept the existence of an organised public power in the first place, arguing that the individual finds himself trapped between, on one hand, threats to his freedom which are horizontal, emanating from private parties, and those which are vertical, arising from the apparatus of public power which exists in order to protect man from man.