Nozick's Minimal State and Libertarian Rights Theory

Robert Nozick (1938–2002), a philosopher at Harvard University, published Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, framing it explicitly as a response on two fronts: against his Harvard colleague John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), and against anarchist arguments — including those of Murray Rothbard — that no state whatsoever can be justified. Nozick staked out a middle position he called the "minimal state" or "night-watchman state": a government limited strictly to protecting citizens against force, theft, and fraud, and to enforcing voluntary contracts, is the only kind of state that can be justified without violating anyone's individual rights, while any state that goes further — for instance by redistributing wealth to achieve a preferred pattern of equality — is illegitimate no matter how well-intentioned its aims.