SULL’ATTUALITÀ DI LEONI

After having touched on the question of translating Freedom and the Law as La libertà e la legge or La libertà e il diritto, the paper briefly examines the studies on Leoni and his contemporaries. The author observes that regarding some of those who were closest to Leoni and whose problems he felt akin to, that is, many of the thinkers he frequented at the Mont Pelerin Society, there is still a lack of research. The topic of the essay is, however, the actuality of Leoni’s intellectual legacy. The thesis is that the theory of power that he elaborated, and which unfortunately did not have much echo among the thinkers cited above, would have contributed to debunking an accusation that is frequently leveled at Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism of not having an adequate theory of the relationship between institutional evolutionism and power. Of limiting themselves, in other words, to thinking that liberal Constitutions would have been an adequate barrier to the expansion of government powers. The author’s conclusion is that even though Leoni was a child of his time, of his hopes and illusions, an integration of his theory of power with the ‘Austrian’ theory of exchange is still today a fruitful way to revitalize Classical Liberalism. That is, that theory of the political regime that is based on an uncompromising defense of individual freedom understood as the best tool to allow everyone, while respecting the freedom of others, to try to improve their own condition and to be able to defend themselves from those who would like to impose asymmetric exchanges.