An Exceptional Power

Abstract

In a late dialogue on English common law, Hobbes addressed a perennial problem: how to allow exceptions to general rules without amplifying divisive claims of sovereign arbitrariness. His solution extended Leviathan’s arguments against lawyers but also relied heavily on a conception of equity that the earlier treatise tended to obscure. For Hobbes, equity was not only a mode of sovereign adjudication, but also an instrument for molding dispositions conducive to “Civill Amity.” Long-term stability therefore demanded that the sovereign power to make exceptions be limited by a general human capacity to treat others fairly.