The Law Versus Individual and Social Freedom

Abstract

The paper touches upon the problem of freedom in the context of legal norms, distinguishing between negative and positive freedom. The author understands freedom as a certain historically changeable social status determined by the development of production and economical relations. This status consists in that the individual or collective subject may take decisions and carry them out in a manner which is called by the defined social culture an action free from constraint.

The law, as any other social norms, while limiting the freedom of the individual makes his behaviours predictable and less colliding with the behaviours of other individuals in a group. At the same time, globally speaking, the law grants more freedom than takes it away, and in this sense it serves freedom. The development of freedom through the law bears a progressive character and runs from "the freedom from" to "the freedom to".

According to the author the domain of legal phenomena is the most convenient sphere for the considerations on freedom, since it is in the law that we deal with various concretizations of freedom. It is at this level that freedom becomes a paramount social issue, and not only an object of sophistic manipulation.