Remember the Common Law
勿忘普通法
Good economists are familiar with Frédéric Bastiat’s parable of the broken window, which illustrates that visible economic activity may have unseen costs. When a broken window leads to the purchase of a new window, it’s easy to think that the broken window helped society by increasing production and trade. In fact, breaking a window makes society worse off; wealth has been destroyed, not increased. Bastiat’s essay on this topic was titled “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”
优秀的经济学家都熟知弗雷德里克•巴斯夏的破窗理论，这个理论说明了，在可见的经济活动之下，可能潜藏了不可见的成本。打破一扇窗户，就要买一扇新的，所以人们很容易认为，通过促进生产和贸易，打破窗户会改善社会境况。而实际上，打破窗户使社会境况恶化了；财富被破坏了，而不是增加了。巴斯夏给讨论此问题的那篇论文起的标题正是“看得见的和看不见的”。
A similar dynamic exists in the legal world. Legislative and regulatory processes are easy to see. Elections routinely draw public attention to legislative and administrative government. Elected and unelected regulators have media operations to tell reporters what they are doing. Common-law rules, on the other hand, are mostly unseen. Legal doctrines such as property and contract emerged quietly from series of court decisions over decades and even centuries, so they often go unconsidered and unspoken. Many people may believe that legislation and regulation do most of the work of ordering society.
在法律领域，类似的情况也同样存在。立法与监管程序是显而易见的。大选会定期让民众注意到立法与行政机构，选举的与非选举的官员会通过媒体来阐述他们的举措。相比之下，普通法下的规则绝大部分是看不见的。有关财产与契约等范畴的法律原则，在数十年甚至数百年来的法庭判例中悄无声息地形成，因此往往既不为人留意，也未经言明。许多人可能会认为，规范社会的，主要是法典与规条。
Libertarians should remember the common law and generally prefer it. The common law process for making the rules of a free society has much to commend it. And where it falls down, it is more readily fixable than legislation and government regulation.
自由意志主义者应该谨记普通法，并将其置于优先地位。普通法体系在形成自由社会规则方面确有不少令人赞许之处。而且与成文法和行政规制体系相比，普通法在其失足跌倒之处也更便于调整修正。
American law students learn early that the common law is an important inheritance from England that differs from the civil-law tradition dominant on the European continent. In the common-law tradition, the basic rules that govern our interactions arise from years of experience over generations. Our forebears learned that justice is served and benefits accrue when people avoid violence, stick to their promises, and allocate things in an orderly way.
美国法学学生很早就认识到普通法体系是继承自英国的一项重要遗产，该法系与欧洲大陆盛行的民法传统大相径庭。在普通法传统下，基本法律规范由一代代人的长期经验积累而来。我们的祖先发现，当人们免于暴力，信守承诺，分配有序时，正义便得到伸张，福祉便得到增长。
The law of battery, contract law, and property law all emerged as common practice solidified into common law. It’s often called “judge-made” law, but at its best common law is “judge-found” law— that is, judges discover law in common practices that are deeply ingrained in society.
有关殴打的法律、契约法以及财产法，都是由惯例凝结固化而成的普通法。普通法常被称为“法官制造的”法律，但最恰当的说法应该是“法官发现的”法律——意思是说，法官们发掘出社会上根深蒂固的惯例中所蕴含的规则。
In contrast, the source of rules in civil-law countries is the code books issued by rulers and governments. Civil codes establish the rules governing contracts, trade, property, criminal law, and so on. The civil-law tradition extols the great law-givers—Solon, Hammurabi, Napoleon—who wrote down the law codes purporting to govern their societies.
对比之下，民法体系国家的规则来源是统治者与政府颁布的法律条文。有关契约、商业、财产、刑法等各方面的规则，均由民法法典确立。民法传统推崇伟大的立法者——梭伦、汉穆拉比、拿破仑——他们一手制订治理社会的法典。
But the founding of civil law is something of a myth. In the times when civil law originated, the bulk of most populations was illiterate. These citizens did not have copies of the civil codes that purported to govern them. The civil-law tradition relies on the fiction that certain powerful men produced laws—but they actually arose like common law from the time-worn habits and customs of their subjects.
然而，民法起源于一个神话。在民法最初形成的时候，大部分民众还是文盲，他们并没有读过那些用来管辖他们的民法法典。民法传统建基于强人立法的虚构故事——实际上它们和普通法一样，源自于古老的习惯与惯例。【编注：作者的意思大概是，有关强人立法的虚构故事为民法赋予了其被广泛接受所需的权威性。】
Part of the genius of the common law is its mix of adaptability and consistency. When new circumstances arise, common-law courts, urged on and educated by the parties to disputes, adapt existing rules in ways that they believe produce the most just and fair outcomes.
普通法的优越之处，部分表现在它在适应性和连贯性之间的平衡。当新的环境条件出现时，普通法的法庭在争讼各方的敦促与启发下，会灵活理解运用现有规则，以期达到一个他们都认为公正公平的结果。
They look for comparable cases in their own and other jurisdictions to learn what adaptation of existing law will produce the best results. Over time, new doctrines emerge and old ones may die out. But at any given time there is a stable rule-set people can use to organize their lives and business activities.
法庭将在本身与其他司法管辖区中查找可供比附的案例，以研究如何调整现有规则才能达致最佳的结果。随着时间的推移，新的法律原则形成，旧的则被淘汰。但在任何一个时间点上，人民生活经商都有一套相对稳定的规则可供遵循。
THE COMMON LAW OF PRIVACY
有关隐私的普通法
The field of privacy protection illustrates how common law develops. In 1890 a Harvard Law Review article entitled “The Right to Privacy” made the original argument that law should address privacy. Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, later to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, catalogued the legal doctrines that might control certain abuses of private life arising from photography and mass circulation newspapers. They argued that the law should explicitly protect privacy.
普通法规则的发展演变，从保护隐私领域就可觅一斑。1890年，一篇刊载在《哈佛法学评论》上题为《隐私权》的文章首次提出，法律需要处理隐私问题。萨缪尔•沃伦与后来成为美国最高法院大法官的路易斯•布兰代斯，整理出了能够制止因拍照和大发行量报纸而引致侵犯私生活的法律原则。他们认为法律应明确保护隐私。
Over time, a new branch of common law was born. Courts across the country began to recognize privacy torts—legally recognized wrongs that give victims of privacy invasions the right to sue invaders. In 1960 eminent legal scholar William L. Prosser documented how privacy as a legal concept had come to constitute four distinct torts: intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairs; public disclosure of embarrassing private facts; publicity that places a person in a false light in the public eye; and appropriation of name or likeness.
随着时间推移，普通法的一个新分支出现了。全国的法庭都开始承认隐私侵权——从法律上确认侵犯隐私是错的，受害者可以控告侵权者。1960年，杰出的法律学者威廉•普罗萨总结了隐私权这一法律概念，并界定了四种不同的侵权类型：侵扰他人独处或私人领域；曝光令人困窘的私人信息；不当报道，以造成对个人的错误印象；盗用人名等个人标记。
The common law of privacy continues to develop and advance. In 1998, the Minnesota Supreme Court recognized invasion of privacy as a tort in that state for the first time. The case was Lake v. Wal-Mart Stores. The defendant’s photo-developing shop failed to deliver two women their vacation photos, but an employee distributed a photo of the two showering together, spurring the court to adopt the “public disclosure” branch of the privacy torts.
有关隐私权的普通法不断地发展和推进。1998年，明尼苏达州最高法院首次裁定侵犯隐私在该州构成民事侵权行为。该案为“莱克诉沃尔玛”（Lake v. Wal-Mart）案。被告的照片冲印店未能交付两位女顾客度假时拍的照片，但被告的一名员工却对外散布了这两名女顾客一起淋浴的照片。法庭认为此举适用于隐私侵权分类中的“公开泄露私人信息”。
Like most law, the privacy torts work in the background, through the threat of lawsuits and not actual days in court or big damage awards. The rarity of lawsuits under the privacy torts may show how consistent these baseline privacy rules are with society’s general mores. Some would argue, of course, that they’re not strict enough and that debatable uses of information should produce successful privacy lawsuits more often. Legal evolution will decide who is right.
与大多数的其他法律一样，隐私侵权的法规在社会背景中默默运作，通过潜在的诉讼威胁，而不是大量的实际庭审或高额赔偿来发挥作用。有关隐私侵权的实际案件之少，可能正说明了保护隐私的法律规则与社会上普遍的道德观念高度一致。当然，可能有些人会认为这些法规不够严厉，信息的争议性使用应该产生更多的隐私案胜诉。孰是孰非，在法律演变中自有定夺。
Privacy law may be in tension with free speech and the First Amendment, so it’s not clear that the privacy torts are a permanent fixture in the common-law pantheon. On the other hand, privacy-law professors and others often use the phrase “privacy harm” in a tacit effort to impress into common language— and ultimately common law—that more offenses against privacy or data security should be recognized as legally actionable harms. It’s all part of a quiet but important debate about our privacy values and what may become our privacy laws.
隐私法也许与言论自由和宪法第一修正案有一定的矛盾，因此隐私侵权能否成为普通法神殿的永久基石之一，并未有定论。而在另一方面，隐私法领域的教授与其他学者经常引用“隐私伤害”来试图与普通用语挂钩——最终与普通法挂钩——并试图将更多侵害隐私或信息安全的行为纳入可采取法律行动的伤害行为。 这些争论虽然悄然进行，但对于我们确立有关隐私的价值观，以及确立针对隐私的法律，都非常重要。
But people don’t often ask how common law torts, property rights, and contracts protect privacy. They ask: “What will Congress and our state legislatures do?” Legislation and regulation get most of the attention.
但人们并不会经常过问，隐私权如何得到普通法的侵权法、财产法，以及契约法的保护。他们会问：“国会和我们的州立法机构会怎么做？”。引人注目的是立法与规制。
The top-down process that established federal privacy regulation of health information illustrates some differences between understated common-law development and cacophonous civil-law-style rule-writing.
有关健康信息隐私的联邦管制规则，是通过一个由上至下的程序确立的，从中可以看出低调的普通法发展与喧闹的民法式规则制定之间的某些区别。
In 1996 Congress revamped the rules around health insurance. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) also addressed health privacy, but it didn’t set new privacy rules. Instead, Congress instructed the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make recommendations about the privacy of individually identifiable health information. It told HHS to go ahead and write privacy regulations based on those recommendations if Congress did not act.
1996年，国会对有关医疗保险的法规进行修订。《健康保险隐私及责任法案》（HIPAA）也涉及健康隐私，但其并未对隐私做出新规定。相反，国会要求卫生及公共服务部（HHS）部长就个人可辨识医疗信息的隐私提供建议，并指示HHS，如果国会没有采取相应行动，该部可根据这些建议撰写隐私相关规定。
When HHS reported back to Congress, it downplayed many safeguards for privacy that already existed. These included medical ethics, explicit and implied contract rights, malpractice claims, and state privacy torts— non regulatory privacy protections that got only a few cryptic lines buried deep in the report. In addition to largely ignoring them, HHS advocated eliminating some of them.
此后，当HHS向国会汇报时，对已有的隐私保护措施予以淡化处理，这些措施包括医疗道德，明确及隐含的契约权利，针对专业失当的索赔，以及各州的隐私侵权法——即非行政的隐私保护，仅在报告的某个角落以寥寥数行隐晦提及。HHS不仅对其几近无视，甚至建议将它们当中的一部分予以剔除。
Today, with the HIPAA privacy regulations in place, people seeking health care sign a lot of forms and see a lot of notices discussing health privacy—but it’s not at all clear that their privacy is well protected. The HIPAA rules preserved and helped solidify behind the- scenes information-sharing practices in the health care industry that may or may not serve consumers and society well. Every year, it seems, there is less and less of a free market in health care to test for and discover consumers’ true interests in health privacy and every other dimension of health care. The common law of health privacy is widely ignored.
如今，由于HIPAA的隐私条文已付诸实施，人们接受医疗保健服务需要签署大量表格，阅读大量讨论健康隐私的告示，但他们的隐私是否得到很好的保障，却根本不清楚。医疗行业幕后的信息共享机制未必能很好地满足消费者和社会整体的要求，而HIPAA的条文则保护了这一机制，并使之更加稳固。年复一年，自由的医疗保健市场似乎正在日益萎缩，我们难以探知与发掘消费者在健康隐私乃至医疗保障其他方面的真正利益之所在。健康隐私方面的普通法原则被普遍忽略了。
INDUCTIVE COMMON LAW VS. DEDUCTIVE REGULATION
归纳式的普通法与推论式的立法
Common law is inductive. Building on experience in case after real-world case, common- law courts accrete knowledge about the rule-set that best serves society. Because rule development occurs with reference to real life cases, it takes advantage of local knowledge about the precise disputes that occur. This allows better approximation of what the truly just rules will be for most cases.
普通法是归纳性的。在众多真实案例的经验基础上，普通法法庭在不断积累认知，寻求最适合社会的法则。由于规则在参照真实案例的过程中发展，其优势是能够利用实际发生的真切争议中所包含的局部知识。在绝大多数情况下，这种方式都能达致较为接近公平法则的效果。【编注：此处作者援引的是哈耶克在1948年的论文《社会中的知识利用》中阐述的思想，哈耶克认为，中央计划者或理性建构者的根本困难在于，无法收集和利用作出正确决定所需的分散的局部知识。】
Hayek emphasized the value of local knowledge in economic decision making. He also emphasized the distinction between common law and top-down legislation in his three-volume work Law, Legislation and Liberty. The Italian lawyer Bruno Leoni is another great thinker in this area. His book Freedom and the Law extolled the virtue of English common law compared to Roman jus civile. The two systems have very different ways of developing rules. Common-law systems hew closer to common justice.
哈耶克强调过局部知识对于经济决策的重要价值，也在他的三卷本著作《法律、立法与自由》中强调了普通法与由上至下立法的区别。意大利律师布鲁诺•莱奥尼在这一领域也颇有研究，他在其著作《自由与法律》中赞扬了英式普通法较之罗马市民法的优点。两套体系在发展法规方面大相径庭，普通法更倾向于追求常理上的正义。
Legislation and regulation more often produce rank re-ordering of rights and liabilities because legislation is deductive. At a single point in time, based on all the knowledge it has drawn together at that moment, a legislature establishes the rule-set that it believes to make the most sense. This is often what it perceives as pleasing the most— or the most important—constituencies. That imperative to please constituencies means that the information legislatures codify often comes from well-organized interests with substantial resources. Special- interest pleading is a hallmark of legislation and regulation.
由于立法是演绎性的，因此权利与义务的轻重经常通过订立法律与规章来编排。在某个给定的时点上，立法机关基于当时所知，建立一整套它认为最合理的法规。这又被认为是在迎合最多数或者最重要的选民。迎合选民，意味着立法机关为之编写法规的诉求，经常会来自于掌握重要资源的有组织团体。因而，制定法律与规章带有满足特殊利益诉求的印记。
Judges in common law courts have fewer of the perverse incentives that legislators and regulators do, particularly when judges are appointed for life terms. A tenured judge gets professional acclaim from developing a reputation for fairness, from clearing dockets, and from suffering few reversals in higher courts. Judges generally don’t anticipate growing their courts’ budgets, getting post-service perks, or being re-installed in office due to the outcomes in their cases, as legislators and regulators often do. Legislation and regulation are systematically subject to a kind of intellectual corruption in which self interest diverges from the public interest.
与立法者和监管者相比，普通法法庭的法官带有的不当动机较少，尤其当法官职位是终身制的时候。为赢得专业上的赞誉，一个终身制的法官需要建立断案公正的名声，避免案件积压，以及减少其裁定被高一级法院推翻的案件。与立法者和监管者不同，法官一般来说并不需要担心他们的判决会对法庭的收入，个人离任津贴，或者恢复职位造成影响。而立法与监管机构则由于自身利益与公众利益有所偏离，容易系统性的滋生智识上的腐败。
WRITING THE RIGHT RULES
编写正确的规则
Rules produced by the deductions of legislators and regulators don’t always fail, of course, and they aren’t always wrong. But it is better to arrive at just rules through a long, society-wide deliberation than through a legislative debate. To illustrate this subtle point, consider the rules that govern the liability of interactive computer services like YouTube, Yelp, craigslist, and Facebook.
当然，立法者与监管者通过推导演绎编写的规则并非必然失败，也并非总是错的。但为了得到公正的规则，经由全社会参与的长期讨论始终还是比经由立法辩论为好。为了体现这当中的微妙之处，让我们来研究规管诸如YouTube、Yelp、Craigslist和Facebook等电脑互动服务供应商之责任的规则。
In the mid-1990s courts were considering whether interactive online services would be considered publishers of the information people uploaded and posted to them. If they were publishers, websites might be liable for defamation and other causes of action because of the material users contributed to them. Had this rule taken hold, operators of online services would probably have allowed only tightly controlled and monitored interactions among users. The rollicking, interactive Internet we know today would have been sharply curtailed.
1990年代中期，法庭在研究在线互动服务是否应该被视为其用户张贴上载信息的发布人。如果是的话，这些网站可能将会因为其用户所提供的信息，而负上诽谤及其他法律责任。如果确立了这一规则，在线服务运营商就很可能会对用户间的交流进行严密的控制与监视，我们今天所见到的生动活泼、积极互动的互联网必将大打折扣。
In response to this concern, Congress passed legislation saying that interactive computer services are not publishers or speakers of any information others provide using their services. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) is one of the most important protections for online speech in the United States.
出于这一顾虑，国会通过法案表明，电脑互动服务供应商并非其用户上载信息的发布人或发言人。《通信规范法案》（CDA）第230条，便是美国网上言论最重要的保障之一。
But CDA section 230 is often talked about as an “immunity” Congress gave to online service providers, a carve-out from general liability rules, put in place to advance a certain public policy goal. The perception of CDA section 230 as a special-interest favor means that other interests are on relatively strong footing when they come to Congress seeking to overturn it. Today, CDA section 230 is under attack from groups who would like to see it reversed. The rule against liability for online service providers would be stronger if courts had arrived at a rule of “no liability” based in considerations of natural justice.
但CDA第230条经常被认为有异于一般的责任条款，是国会旨在推动某一特定的公共政策，而赋予网络服务运营商的“豁免权”。该条款给人以一种照顾特殊利益的印象，这意味着当其他利益的代表寻求在国会推翻这一条款的时候，将会有较强的理据。如今，一些持反对立场的团体正在挑战该条款。如果在线服务供应商的“免责”是经由法庭考虑自然正义原则之后确立的话， 该规则就将会有较强的说服力。
When the rules that organize our society are temporal products of legislation, they may always be “in play” for a legislative reversal. Online service providers must always remain vigilant in Washington, D.C., for attempts to undercut their special “immunity.” The rules that govern online liability were established quickly, which is good, but they are less settled than they otherwise would be, and there is one more reason for private businesses to maintain a stable of lobbyists and lawyers in Washington.
如果规制社会的规则是因应时势的立法产物，那么这些规则就处于一种随时可能被立法推翻的状态之下。在线服务供应商就必须在华盛顿特区保持高度警觉，以防有人破坏他们的特殊“豁免权”。迅速订立规制网上责任的规则是好事，但这些规则的认受性本来可以更高一些，而且这也为私营企业在华盛顿豢养着一班说客和律师提供了多一个理由。
There is no guarantee, of course, that the common-law rule would be the same right now as what CDA section 230 produced. The common-law process might still be searching for the right rule. Common-law development would probably find, though, that online service providers are not liable for the acts of others.
当然，普通法体系下订立的规则，未必就和CDA第230条的内容一样。在普通法程序下，我们可能仍在寻找恰当的规则，当然，普通法体系很可能会认为在线服务供应商无需为他人的行为负责。
FAR FROM PERFECT, BUT BETTER IN PRACTICE
虽远未完美，但在实践中占优
This is no argument that common-law courts are perfect. They are not. It takes a very long time for just rules to be found out and settled on through common-law development. Elected judges often have incentives to please powerful constituencies. The class-action mechanism is prone to abuse and often used to reward plaintiffs’ lawyers. Punitive damages are too often a source of windfalls to lucky plaintiffs. The rules about who pays for litigation may be changed to improve the delivery of justice in the courts.
没有人会认为普通法法庭运作得很完美。并非如此。在普通法体系下，确立公平规则，并得到认受，需要很长的时间；选举产生的法官常有动机去迎合强大的利益团体；集体诉讼机制容易被滥用，而且常常有利于原告的律师；幸运的原告经常从惩罚性赔偿中大捞一票；为了正义能更好地在法庭上体现，诉讼费用的分担规则可能需要进行修改。
But these challenges are more correctable than the dynamics in legislation and regulation. Public choice economics teaches that actors in all these rule-making processes will pursue their own self-interest, but the interests of legislators and regulators are likely to diverge from justice more often than the interests of judges.
但这些难题，要比立法与规制过程中的纠葛易于解决。公共选择经济学指出，在规则制定的过程中，相关各方会追求自身的最大利益，但与法官比起来，立法者与监管者的利益很可能更容易与社会公义有分歧。
There is a fair argument that legislation and government regulation create certainty, which may make it worthwhile to accept their many costs. This is particularly acute in the area of high tech, where the application of common law may be unclear.
一种意见认为，明文立法与政府规章带来了确定性，因此随之而来的众多代价也就变得可以接受。这不是没有道理，特别在普通法的适用性并不明确的高科技领域，这显得尤其突出。
But regulation produces certainty in theory better than it does in practice. Witness the recent “BitLicense” fiasco in New York State. When Bitcoin, a digital currency, first captured public attention a few years ago, New York superintendent of financial services Ben Lawsky saw it as an opportunity to make his mark in a hot new area. He proposed an ill-defined “BitLicense” that would require registration of Bitcoin businesses in New York. During the rule-making process, his office declined to release “research and analysis” backing the necessity of a BitLicense, in violation of New York’s Freedom of Information Law.
成文法规理论上能带来确定性，但在实践中却未必。近来“比特登记证”（BitLicense）在纽约州的惨败便是一例。当电子货币比特币在几年前引起公众关注的时候，纽约金融服务主管本•洛斯基将其视为他在这个炙手可热的新领域留名的机会。他提议推出含混不清的“比特登记证”条例，要求纽约的比特币业务进行注册登记。在条例制定过程中，他的部门不惜违反纽约的《信息自由法》，拒绝提供与证明“比特登记证”之必要性相关的“研究与分析”。
The final “BitLicense” was a hodgepodge of regulations like the ones that burden the mainstream financial services sector. They were an ill fit with this emerging technology and a hindrance to innovation because they drove up the cost of starting new businesses. They didn’t acknowledge the technology’s inherent capability to provide consumer protections that surpass existing financial services. Shortly after the “BitLicense” was finalized, Lawsky stepped down from his post to establish a financial regulation consultancy.
和那些为主流金融服务增加负担的规章一样，最终出台的“比特登记证”条例是个大杂烩。这些条例完全不适应这一新兴技术，并且因提高创业成本而妨碍了创新。它们无视新技术内在的保护消费者的能力，这种保护超越了现有的金融服务。“比特登记证”条例推出不久，洛斯基就下台创立了一家金融监管咨询公司。
Today, it is anyone’s guess whether and how the New York Department of Financial Services will amend or enforce the technology- specific regulation that Lawsky produced. The “BitLicense” did not create certainty about the rules of the road for Bitcoin businesses in New York, and it did not create an upwelling of Bitcoin business activity in New York. America’s financial capital appears to be ceding ground on financial innovation to London, in the birthplace of common law.
今天，大家都在猜测纽约的金融服务管理局是否会修订或者执行洛斯基留下来的这一针对特定科技的条例，以及具体如何修订或执行。“比特登记证”并没有为比特币业务在纽约的发展之路带来确定性，也没有令比特币业务在纽约蓬勃发展。美国的金融之都在金融创新方面似乎正在让位于伦敦，普通法的发源地。
Common-law rules foster innovation because they allow anyone with a new idea or process to experiment with it, subject only to background rules, such as “stick to your promises” and “do no harm.” There are no forms to fill out or licensing fees. There is no oversight body that must examine how an innovation fits into pre-existing regulation. “Permissionless innovation” does mean some more risk to consumers and society, but our experience with high tech shows just how great the reward is when behavior is controlled with light-touch, simple, fair common-law rules.
普通法规则有利于创新，因为它允许人们去试验新主意和新方法，只要遵守诸如“履行承诺”、“避免伤害”等基本规则即可。不需要填表格，不需要付牌照费，也没有监管部门去检验一项创新在现行规章下如何自处。“免许可创新”的确意味着消费者和社会将面对较高的风险，但经验已经告诉我们，当我们的行为处于简单、公平的普通法规则的规制之下时，高科技将会给我们带来多么巨大的回报。
The United States and England today live under a dual system. In many areas, they continue to enjoy the benefits of the common law. But legislatures increasingly insert themselves, making temporal judgments that rejigger the rules that people and businesses must live by. In many fields, people look to legislation and regulation first, rather than examining how time-honored rules can be adapted to solve new problems.
现今的美国与英格兰生活在一个双重体系之下。在很多方面，她们继续享受着普通法的益处。但立法机关正不断强化自己的作用，用世俗的判断来改变日常生活与商业活动所需遵守的规则。在很多领域，人们首先寄望于立法与规管，而不是去审视自古以来的规则可以如何调适，以解决新生的问题。
Legislatures and regulatory agencies have a lot of smart people working in them. They universally believe they are pursuing the best interests of their jurisdictions. But the system they work in has perverse incentives, and they have little of the knowledge that common-law processes gather and pass down through the ages. “The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience,” wrote jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in his 1881 book, The Common Law.
立法机关与监管部门当中不乏能人，他们普遍认为他们在为其辖区的最大利益而努力。但他们所供职的体系有着不当的激励，并且他们对普通法体系经年累月累积传承下来的知识知之甚少。法学家小奥利佛•温德尔•霍姆斯在他1881年所著的《普通法》一书中写道，“法律的生命从不在于逻辑，而在于经验，”
The common law is an important part of structuring and ordering a free and prosperous society. It is preferable to legislation and government regulation. Even when we confront new problems, we lovers of liberty should remember the common law.
构建与规范一个自由繁荣的社会，普通法体系乃重要一环，它比成文的法律与政府规章更为可取。即便遭遇新的挑战，热爱自由的我们也不应该忘记普通法。
翻译：小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)
校对：小橘子
编辑：辉格@whigzhou