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Logically Private Laws

This chapter argues that there could in principle be laws whose existence, legitimacy, goodness, and efficacy as laws depend upon their being private, in this sense: their existence is not widely known. More specifically, the existence of the laws is not known to those who legitimately benefit from the laws and yet who would misguidedly destroy the laws were they to come to know of them, and the existence of the laws is not known to those who would illegitimately benefit from being able to circumvent the laws, and who could illegitimately circumvent them were they to come to know of them. (The idea is that the secrecy of these laws increases their efficacy against bad behavior, and their secrecy makes it less likely that the public will lose its nerve and demand the rescinding of laws that are in fact in the public interest.) These laws are therefore in a way logically private: they cannot at one and the same time exist, have the foregoing virtues, and be public. After proposing some general conditions under which one might think such laws ought to be enacted, this chapter moots logical objections to the very idea that there could be such laws, practical objections to their workability, and moral objections to their permissibility.