ABSTRACT
Given my affinity for Smith’s theory of justice, it took this observation of Robert Shaver’s in his chapter, ‘Virtues, utility, and rules’, to jar me into facing the question: why is it that Smith’s jurisprudence has been mainly disregarded while his Wealth of Nations is celebrated as the chief blueprint for political economy and free markets? This question warrants attention given that Smith’s system of natural liberty is predicated on the natural virtue of justice. In Alexander Broadie’s words, in his chapter, ‘Sympathy and the impartial spectator’, Smith’s ‘economic theory was developed therefore within the context of a moral theory that goes wide and deep, a context that carries the message that an economic theory has to be developed within a moral philosophical framework’ (165). In reading The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, I found new compelling arguments to both counter apparent weaknesses in Smith’s jurisprudence, and to respond to an increasingly prevalent tendency to solve the infamous ‘Adam Smith problem’ by replacing sympathy with self-interest as the basis of social norms and legal standards.1
