ABSTRACT
The discussion of ‘neutrality* as a - much less the - defining characteristic of liberalism is a fairly recent development. One of our contributors dates it, with a precision that is not altogether spurious, to 1974. Earlier liberals may well have been less concerned to identify the ‘true core’ of liberalism, and they may well have been less expansive on the merits of the notion of neutrality in that regard, than contemporary authors are. Still, liberals have long been keenly aware of something very closely akin to the virtue of neutrality on the part of the police, the judiciary and the military: unless they dispense justice without fear or favour, liberal theory in practice simply does not work.1 Thus while it is only in the last decade or so that the term has come into particular focus as a general issue, apparently similar notions have long figured largely in recognizably liberal political discourse.
