 One remarkably strong emphasis among neoliberals, especially Hayek, is the importance of the rule of law. All persons have a right to be treated as equals by the legal, administrative, and political institutions in their society. No one is to be favored according to their degree of social influence or social power or inherited status. When people are not protected by the rule of law, their freedoms are intolerably restricted because they can be arbitrarily interfered with and cannot predict how they will fare in the future. This means they cannot make unimpeded use of the liberties that they currently possess. Neoliberals wield the rule of law against those who favor more extensive states, including both social-democratic liberals and socialists, on the grounds that extensive administrative states must violate the rule of law to engage in their characteristic activities. Hayek argues that absolutism arises from “powerful, centralized administrative machinery” whose professional administrative class becomes “the main rulers of the people” (1960 [2011: 193]). Large bureaucracies invariably interfere, and in an arbitrary fashion. This dangerous logic of bureaucracy was a fundamental feature of Buchanan’s research program, and the rule of law is his solution, too. For these reasons, neoliberals believe equal treatment before the law is a central procedural liberty that persons possess not only in court but whenever they are subject to state coercion. Neoliberals embrace limited government in part because they believe that equal treatment before the law can be achieved only by limiting government and embracing capitalist economic liberties like freedom of contract, since both institutional practices allow others to follow general rules and avoid seeking approval from an arbitrary authority (1960 [2011: 205, 230]).