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Concept

Legislator

Overview

A legislator, or lawmaker, is a person who writes and passes laws, especially someone who is a member of a legislature. Legislators are often elected by the people, but they can be appointed, or hereditary. Legislatures may be supra-national (for example, the European Parliament), national, such as the Japanese Diet, sub-national as in provinces, or local.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

  1. In order that our illustration of the opposite case may be taken from the same class of subjects as the former, we will suppose, in contrast with the situation of the judge, the position of the legislator. As the judge has laws for his guidance, so the legislator has rules, and maxims of policy; but it would be a manifest error to suppose that the legislator is bound by these maxims in the same manner as the judge…

    John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

    Names Legislator several times; states what Legislator is.

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  2. The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in the State. If he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less by reason of his office, which is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty.

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses

    The chapter “THE LEGISLATOR” is titled for Legislator; opens on Legislator.

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  3. The legislator is to consider all these things and to bid the citizens, as far as possible, not to lose sight of numerical order; for no single instrument of youthful education has such mighty power, both as regards domestic economy and politics, and in the arts, as the study of arithmetic. Above all, arithmetic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and dull, and makes him quick to learn, retentive, shrewd, and aided…

    Plato, Laws

    States what Legislator is; names Legislator several times.

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Philosophers who discussed Legislator

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition

Part of Liberalism.

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