# Du contrat social prints that whoever refuses the general will shall be forced to be free

Date: 1762

## The fact

The 1762 Du contrat social, as later English and Gallica copies still print, contains the clause that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so, ‘forced to be free’. It is not a 1793 statute he signed.

## Context

A philosophical licence for civic coercion can later bless emergency courts. Split popular-sovereignty gains onto an improving row.

[Jean-Jacques Rousseau](/people/jean-jacques-rousseau) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official library, encyclopedia, or public-domain edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: The Social Contract — Cole translation, public-domain English (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333; Project Gutenberg).

## Significance

A printed force-to-be-free clause is a [judicial-independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) risk path with high confidence on the text.

A printed force-to-be-free clause is a judicial-independence risk path with high confidence on the text.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: https://factrail.ai/people/jean-jacques-rousseau

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/jjr-forced-to-be-free