Polycentric law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polycentric law, as opposed to monopoly statist law, refers to a set of competing or overlapping legal systems and jurisdictions. Prior to the rise of the modern State, before approximately 1500, laws were not territorially based, but rather based on kinship, race, area of competence (e.g. church law, guild law, law merchant), and so on. The Roman empire, for example, had Roman law for Romans, but generally left indigenous legal systems for non-Romans.

Polycentric theory shares Lon L. Fuller's definition of law as

"the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules. Unlike most modern theories of law, this view treats law as an activity and regards a legal system as the product of a sustained purposive effort." (The Morality of Law, 1964)

Law, so defined, is discrete from legislation. And if law is practiced by everyone -- not just by legislators, lawyers, and law enforcement officers -- then it is possible (and to the polycentric theorists, desirable) that many different legal systems co-exist.

Some anarcho-capitalists envision a society with competing courts and police firms, generically referred to as Private defense agencies (PDAs). This is a form of polycentric law.

Another incarnation of polycentric law is a proprietary business method known as "Restitution Transfer and Recoupment". This method creates RTR agencies that purchase rights to damages from victims, and provide payment options to offenders as an alternative to incarceration and criminality.