Lockean Epistemic Obligations: Government Obstruction of Judgment Breaches Fiduciary Duty

Abstract

John Locke characterizes political authority as a fiduciary trust held for the preservation of people's lives, liberties, and estates. Yet the epistemic duties implied by that trust remain under-examined. This article formulates a formal syllogism demonstrating that any governmental act obstructing or frustrating the public's capacity for judgment is a breach of fiduciary duty. It extracts four judgment-enabling liberties-access to facts, freedom of inquiry, liberty of conscience and speech, and deliberative capacity-from Locke's major works to identify the concrete "preclusive abuses" he lists, and shows how his text supplies a graduated remedial ladder: reforming or removing the legislature when accountability can be restored and, where no earthly forum remains, an appeal to heaven. A process-flow diagram integrates these steps. The analysis re-anchors modern transparency and epistemic-democracy doctrines in seventeenth century theory refine fiduciary-constitutional scholarship and recast the appeal-to-heaven clause as an epistemic failsafe rather than a purely violent last resort.

Keywords: John Locke, Fiduciary government, Obstruction of judgment, Epistemic legitimacy, Transparency and opacity, Appeal to heaven