To be free is to depend on no one's arbitrary power: an unchecked power is enough to enslave, even if it never acts.

Supports

Pettit, Skinner · Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government · 1997

Living exposed to another's good will changes conduct without any interference being needed: whoever can lose everything at another's whim learns to please, to keep quiet, to anticipate the wishes of the powerful.
This self-censorship is a real loss of liberty: options that no law and no one forbids become practically unusable, out of prudence.
Present changes nothing here: it rests on discretionary permission, not on an enforceable right, and so remains revocable; what weighs is not what the powerful do, but what they could do with impunity.
Only protections independent of anyone's good will (laws, enforceable rights, counter-powers, avenues of appeal) undo this hold: they do not make the powerful better, they subject their power to check and contest.

Therefore Liberty is a status: not living under arbitrary power, that is, a power that could be exercised without possible check or contest.

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Deepenings

The eyeball test

A free society, proposes, is one where anyone can look anyone else in the eye without fear or deference: without having to lower one's gaze before an employer, a husband, or an official, or to monitor their moods.
The test makes non-domination observable: wherever strategies are needed to shield oneself from another's good will, there is domination, however gentle the masters.

Therefore Liberty is measured by the posture each person can hold before others.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all

Entirely

Put to the test

Problem