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A Protest Against Law Taxes
Showing The
Peculiar Mischievousness of all Such Impositions
as Add to the Expense of Appeal to Justice.
Jeremy Bentham
(Printed in 1793, and First Published in 1795.)
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Since the law-taxes on civil suits Bentham here complains of were
repealed, it might seem that this essay would no longer be of much
interest. But there are two arguments that Bentham rebuts that are of
interest here: firstly, there is the idea that the users of a
government service, in this case the law courts, ought to be the ones
to pay for it, the which rule Benthan
argues is inappropriate in this instance. Secondly, there is the
question of whether there ought to be some pecuniary check to ``groundless'' or ``frivolous''
litigation, some thing that is an issue in the so-called ``tort
reform'' movement in the United States. This idea, Bentham also
rejects. (I offer no assessment, yet, of the merits of Bentham's
counterarguments.) [Paul Lyon]
A Note on the Text
This text was digitized from Volume II of the Bowring edition of
Bentham's works (1843). The Bowring text, in turn, was derived from a
pamphlet published in 1795.
The Text
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Last modified: Fri Mar 1 12:21:41 CST 2002