I stupidly left out important verbiage from this article.
I said that consumers are the legislators in a Rothbardian society (rights protection firms the executive, judgement firms the judicial). What I meant is that private property owners are the legislators.
When do the rulings from a decentralized market of judges become law? As private property owners declare public allegiance to precedent. This is the last piece of a complete paradigm of law in a Rothbardian society.
When you enter someone’s property, you would know the law which applies there (probably via a sign very much similar to what we have now: “warning these premises are monitored for public safety”). One function of judicial firms could be to establish a current body of common law. “Equifax Common Code 2019.1 in effect”. These codes could, through precedent, have set times where there are meant to cycle over to a replacement (lacking a replacement, defer to the previous code). There could be standards about making the code that a proprietor applies to their property very clear. Lack of clarity about what law is applied in a place could be a basis for absolution of a crime, and the victim party could sue the private property owner where the crime occurred for negligence in this case.
Still, as precedent emerges, judicial firms could also build them into a legal code which they update for use periodically. These codes would greatly simplify and unify the enforcement of law in a marketplace. “Which codes are the parties invoking, if any, in this ruling?” would be the first question of a judge. Reconciling different codes would be a key function of a libertarian judge.
Regardless, there would and should be clear declarations about which bodies of law apply when and where in Ancapistan. It’s just, the people entitled to do this would be private property owners. Now there’s your market of law!
This little nuance about who legislates is interesting to me because of what it implies about contemporary foreign policy. The United States could pass an amendment which unilaterally subjects all agents of the US government to a body of law which treats all humans as equal under the law (no Gitmo, constitution free zones, carpet bombing because those poor bastards are in the wrong place at the wrong time). This would immediately end all abuses of the US government at home and abroad. However, what happens when the Marines try to knock on some Russian oligarch’s door with a “warrant” – in Moscow?
Firm reliance on an immutable system of law (as opposed to whims or commands of a ruler) is a good start, but such a practice needs a paradigm of reconciling different systems. This could include something as crass as tribute payments or state-to-state bribes. So what? War costs money, anyway. Imagine if China racked up a “favors” trade imbalance with the US (pretty please don’t bootleg DVDs anymore, we’ll trade you copyright laws for our opposition to your oil claims in Philippine waters)! A market for international dispute resolution which prices international grievances against each other in a market where nations can trade on them. I imagine the war profiteers would lose money to the underwriters fast.
