The Enterprise of Law

Benson, an economist, assembles the historical and contemporary record of law produced without a state monopoly: the medieval Law Merchant, Anglo-Saxon and early Icelandic customary systems, and in the present day commercial arbitration, private security, private dispute resolution and industry codes. His argument is comparative rather than utopian — customary law evolves out of the parties’ own incentive to settle and to keep trading, while legislation reflects the incentives of whichever interests capture the legislature, so the question is not whether private ordering is perfect but whether it is worse than what it is being compared to.

Why it’s on the list: It is one of three entries in the curriculum’s short anarcho-capitalism section — the last stop in a sequence that runs liberalism, conservatism, Marxism and then the limit case where the state’s core function is put out to tender.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Anarcho-Capitalism. The full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Institutions — the book’s unit of analysis: rules that evolve versus rules that are legislated.
• Decentralization — the organizing principle of the systems it documents.
• Government — the monopoly the book questions.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.