Catallaxy ® Institute - Classical Liberalism

We can form as many categories of people as we want in order to apply the same laws to them. Within each category people will be all "equal" before the particular law that applies to them, regardless of the fact that other people, grouped in other categories, will be treated quite differently by other laws ... The same courts are entitled to apply all these laws of the land equally to all those included in the categories concerned. This may still be called approximately "equality before the law". But it is obvious that in such a case not everybody will receive equal treatment under the law of the land considered as a whole. For instance, in Italy, the third article of the constitution states that "all citizens are equal before the law". In fact, however, there are laws that constrain landlords to keep tenants at very low rent, notwithstanding previous agreements to the contrary, whereas other categories of people, who entered into contracts in other capacities than those of landlords or of tenants, are not interfered with by any special law and still may -nay, must- keep the agreements that they have made.

Leoni, Bruno

Freedom and the Law

1961 , p. 68