Law without Rulers

Rulers and law-makers purport to be men as rulers over other men. They claim the power to govern and ultimately coerce other men, ranging from prohibitions on criticising them or challenging their authority to regulating their conduct by requiring or prohibiting terms of contracts or creating offences, to naked impositions of tribute, conscription or even genocide.

Yet what is the alternative form of social organisation and government? Can we have law without lawmakers, and if so, is it coercive or compulsory, and what is its form and substance? Many free market theorists have tried to develop the idea of opt-in law, the idea that people can contract for or choose the law they will live under on a conscious basis, as a consumer decision from a range of market suppliers. This approach is needless and unfruitful: the law can develop, like language, not as a consumer product but as a shared tool for human interaction. John Hasnas writes, in The Depoliticization of Law :

Depoliticized law is law. Hence, it is coercive. The duty to obey has not been voluntarily assumed and compliance is not optional. However, depoliticized law is not the conscious creation of any identifiable person or group of persons. It evolves out of the effort of human beings to resolve interpersonal disputes in the absence of a centralized authority. The slow accretion of successful resolutions of individual disputes eventually produces recognizable rules of law of binding effect. Such rules do not represent the command of any identifiable person and are not an embodiment of anyone’s will. Therefore, one can be bound by depoliticized law without thereby being rendered subject to the will of another. In a system of depoliticized law, it really is the law and not men or women that rule.

As with all writings of John Hasnas, it seems, I highly recommend this work to those interested in the basis for and development of law, and to those interested in alternative social institutions.