The Composite Model of Justice and Liberty in the Liberal Small State: From Theory to Legal Policymaking

Abstract

The relationship between liberty and justice has long been regarded as one of the most fundamental theoretical tensions in political philosophy and public law. Focusing on the paradigm of the “small state,” this article seeks to rethink the possibility of organizing a new conceptual understanding of this relationship within a composite model of liberty and justice. The analytical basis of the study rests on the assumption that the main issue is not a value-based conflict between liberty and justice, but rather the manner in which institutional and legal design can ensure their co-sustainability. To this end, at the normative level, three fundamental principles—negative liberty, procedural justice, and equality of opportunity—are identified as the theoretical pillars of the model. At the institutional level, the division of labor among the small state, the market, and civil society, together with the establishment of independent regulatory institutions and general, transparent rules, illustrates a “system of limited but targeted intervention.” At the policymaking level, the logic of principle-based regulation, the simplification of legal rules, and regulatory impact assessment based on indicators of liberty and justice are explained. The findings of the study, obtained through a descriptive-analytical method, indicate that the small state can be normatively defensible only if it is grounded not in the negation of responsibility for justice, but in its redefinition within the framework of institutional and opportunity-oriented justice. Within this framework, liberty and justice are organized not in conflict, but in a co-sustainable relationship: negative liberty opens the field of possibility, while institutional justice guarantees the conditions for equal enjoyment of it. Accordingly, the smallness of the state does not mean a reduction in responsibility, but rather the rule-bound, accountable, and self-limiting exercise of power; an order in which emancipation from the concentration of public power coincides with the restraint of private monopolies, and the relationship between liberty and justice is elevated from a conflictual duality to an institutional and coexistent construct.