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Polycentric law is a theoretical legal structure in which "providers" of
legal system The contemporary national legal systems are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, statutory law, religious law or combinations of these. However, the legal system of each country is shaped by its unique history an ...
s compete or overlap in a given
jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...
, as opposed to monopolistic
statutory law Statutory law or statute law is written law passed by a body of legislature. This is opposed to oral or customary law; or regulatory law promulgated by the executive or common law of the judiciary. Statutes may originate with national, stat ...
according to which there is a sole provider of
law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
for each jurisdiction.
Devolution Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level. It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories ...
of this monopoly occurs by the principle of jurisprudence in which they rule according to higher law.


Overview

Tom W. Bell, former director of telecommunications and technology studies at
Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Ind ...
, now a professor of law at
Chapman University School of Law Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, commonly referred to as Chapman University School of Law or Chapman Law School, is a private, non-profit law school located in Orange, California. The school offers the Juris Doctor degree (JD), ...
in
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
wrote "Polycentric Law", published by the
Institute for Humane Studies The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and g ...
, when he was a law student at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. In it he notes that others use phrases such as "non-monopolistic law" to describe these polycentric alternatives.Tom W. Bell
Polycentric Law
Institute for Humane Studies The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and g ...
Review, Volume 7, Number 1 Winter 1991/92.
He outlines traditional
customary law A legal custom is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law". Customary law (also, consuetudina ...
(also known as consuetudinary law) before the creation of states, including as described by Friedrich A. Hayek, Bruce L. Benson, and David D. Friedman. He mentions
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
customary law A legal custom is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law". Customary law (also, consuetudina ...
,
church law Canon law (from grc, κανών, , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is th ...
, guild law, and merchant law as examples of what he believes is polycentric law. He states that customary and statutory law have co-existed through history, as when
Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...
applied to Romans throughout the
Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...
, but indigenous legal systems were permitted for non-Romans. In "Polycentric Law in the New Millennium," which won first place in the
Mont Pelerin Society The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders.Michael Novak, 'The Moral Imperative of a Free Economy', in '' The 4% Solution: Unleashing the E ...
's 1998 Friedrich A. Hayek Fellowship competition, Bell predicts three areas where polycentric law might develop: alternative dispute resolution, private communities, and the Internet. The
University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the R ...
(
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...
) funded a "Polycentric Law" research project from 1992 to 1995, led by professor Lars D. Eriksson. Its goal was to demonstrate "the inadequacy of current legal paradigms by mapping the indeterminacies of both the modern law and the modern legal theory. It also addressed the possibility of legal and ethical alternativies to the modern legal theories" and "provided openings to polycentric legal theories both by deconstructing the idea of unity in law and re-constructing legal and ethical differences". The project hosted two international conferences. In 1998 the book ''Polycentricity: The Multiple Scenes of Law'', edited by Ari Hirvonen, collected essays written by scholars involved with the project. Professor
Randy Barnett Randy Evan Barnett (born February 5, 1952) is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is the director of the Georg ...
, who originally wrote about "non-monopolistic" law, later used the phrase "polycentric legal order". He explains what he sees as advantages of such a system in his book ''The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law.'' Bruce L. Benson also uses the phrase, writing in a Cato Institute publication in 2007: "A customary system of polycentric law would appear to be much more likely to generate efficient sized jurisdictions for the various communities involved—perhaps many smaller than most nations, with others encompassing many of today’s political jurisdictions (e.g., as
international commercial law International Commercial Law is a body of legal rules, conventions, treaties, domestic legislation and commercial customs or usages, that governs international commercial or business transactions. A transaction will qualify to be international if e ...
does today)." John K. Palchak and Stanley T. Leung in "No State Required? A Critical Review of the Polycentric Legal Order," criticize the concept of polycentric law. Legal scholar
Gary Chartier Gary William Chartier (born 1966) Gary Chartier is a legal scholar, philosopher, political theorist, and theologian. His work addresses anarchism and ethics. Chartier is a professor and serves as associate dean of La Sierra University's busines ...
in "Anarchy and Legal Order" elaborates and defends the idea of law without the state. It proposes an understanding of how law enforcement in a
stateless society A stateless society is a society that is not governed by a state. In stateless societies, there is little concentration of authority; most positions of authority that do exist are very limited in power and are generally not permanently held ...
could be legitimate and what the optimal substance of law without the state might be, suggests ways in which a stateless legal order could foster the growth of a culture of freedom, and situates the project it elaborates in relation to
leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in so ...
,
anti-capitalist Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as so ...
, and
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
traditions.


See also

*
Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism (or, colloquially, ancap) is an anti-statist, libertarian, and anti-political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property en ...
*
Autonomism Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tende ...
*
Consociationalism Consociationalism ( ) is a form of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which remains stable due to consultation ...
*
Corporative federalism Corporative federalism is a system of federalism not based on the common federalist idea of relative land area or nearest spheres of influence for governance, but on fiduciary jurisdiction to corporate personhood in which groups that are conside ...
*
Governance without government Governance without government is a form of governance which uses non-governmental means of government. It is a paradigm opposing modern democracy. Modern democracy uses democratic procedures and institutions, including legislation and communicat ...
*
Heterarchy A heterarchy is a system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in soci ...
*
Horizontalidad ''Horizontalidad'' (, horizontality or horizontalism) is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development, and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power. These structures and relationships ...
* Legal pluralism *
Libertarian municipalism Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ec ...
* Ophelimity *
Panarchy Panarchy may refer to: * Panarchy (Dartmouth), student society at Dartmouth College * Panarchy (ecology) A social-ecological system consists of 'a bio-geo-physical' unit and its associated social actors and institutions. Social-ecological system ...
*
Personal jurisdiction Personal jurisdiction is a court's jurisdiction over the ''parties'', as determined by the facts in evidence, which bind the parties to a lawsuit, as opposed to subject-matter jurisdiction, which is jurisdiction over the ''law'' involved in the ...
*
Pillarisation Pillarisation (from the nl, verzuiling) is the politico-denominational segregation of a society into groups by religion and associated political beliefs. These societies were (and in some areas, still are) vertically divided into two or more gr ...
*
Voluntary association A voluntary group or union (also sometimes called a voluntary organization, common-interest association, association, or society) is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement, usually as volunteers, to form a body (or organization) to ac ...
*
Voluntaryism Voluntaryism (,"Voluntaryism"
'' Polycentric Law and the Minimal State: The Case of Air Pollution
,
Libertarian Alliance The Libertarian Alliance (LA) refers to two libertarian think tanks in the UK. Originally one organisation, it split in 1982. One Libertarian Alliance was renamed "Mises UK" in 2017; the remaining Libertarian Alliance holds regular meetings in ...
, ''Political Notes'' 76, 1993. * Roderick T. Long,
The Nature of Law
, ''Formulations'', published by Free Nation Foundation, Spring 1994. {{Authority control Anarchist theory Libertarian theory Pluralism (philosophy) Philosophy of law