Intergenerational Invisible Hand: A Comment on Sartorius’s “Government Regulation and Intergenerational Justice”

In “Government Regulation and Intergenerational Justice,” Rolf Sartorius argues that some government regulation is justified in order to protect the rights of the unborn.’ More than half of his paper is a discussion of the theory that views the only justifiable function of government as the “umpirage of the law of nature.” In the remainder of his paper, he argues for an extension of the theory in order to justify regulation as well as umpirage. In particular, he argues that protecting the rights of the unborn represents an especially strong case where government regulation is justified.

Volume 8, Number 2 (1987)