Justice & Law Quote by Jeremy Bentham

Bentham’s line lands like a provocation, but it’s really a diagnostic tool: if you want law, you are already consenting to a cut in freedom. The phrasing is deliberately absolute - “every law,” not “bad law” - because Bentham is trying to strip away the comforting fiction that regulation is a costless moral upgrade. Law is coercion with paperwork. It doesn’t merely guide; it narrows the menu of possible actions, backed by the credible threat of punishment. Calling that narrowing an “infraction” is Bentham’s way of forcing liberal societies to look at the price tag they prefer not to itemize.

The subtext is utilitarian and suspicious of sanctimony. Bentham isn’t performing libertarian purity; he’s setting up the utilitarian bargain. If all law injures liberty, the only serious question becomes: when is the injury worth it? The line functions as a preemptive strike against paternalism and moralistic legislation - the kind that smuggles in class prejudice or religious discipline while claiming to “protect” people. By naming the harm upfront, Bentham demands justification in the currency he trusts: measurable public benefit, not tradition, not virtue, not the tastes of the powerful.

Context matters: late-18th and early-19th century Britain is a world of expanding bureaucracy, harsh criminal codes, and reform debates about prisons, policing, and rights. Bentham’s project was to modernize law by making it legible, accountable, and proportionate. The quote is less anti-law than anti-self-deception: if you’re going to take liberty, admit you’re taking it, then prove you had to.