Legal Action in a Mincarcist Society

[Iggy]

What in your opinion would be the options of the average Joe or Joanne to take legal action, or defend him or herself in a Minarcist or Anarchist society where State subsidised access to legal support is not available. Thanks guys.

[Magnus]

What in your opinion would be the options of the average Joe or Joanne to take legal action, or defend him or herself in a Minarcist or Anarchist society where State subsidised access to legal support is not available. Thanks guys.

 

There is no reason that private dispute-resolution enterprises could not perform the same function, and do it far better, than the States' courts do now.  There already are huge private DRO operations now, which most ordinary people don't know about, set up by and for businesses, so they do not have to go to the government's courts.  The entire financial industry uses a private arbitration system whenever possible.  The field we now call commercial law was created in the early modern period, by and among merchants in a fully private court system, which they created so they could trade with one another, and it operated for centuries before the government courts co-opted that function wholesale. 

 

One important feature of private dispute resolution services is the extent to which they offer reciprocity with other similar services -- when you get a decision from one, will it be considered valid by all of the other mainstream arbitrators?  That's a valuable feature.  That sort of reciprocity is the way that the States' courts operate now -- a judgment in FLorida is equally valid in California. 

 

It would be up to the parties to agree to a service.  I suppose that one feature of such a private network of dispute resolution services would be that anyone who ignores a claim against him (and thus loses by default) would thereafter be unable to go back to that service to ask for its services as a plaintiff in another case -- if you're not going to recognize a company's dispute services when you're the defendant, you won't get access to their services when you are the wronged party and want to make a claim of your own. 

[Pepin]

Speaking from a anarchist point of view, if protection is a service that is needed then it will be provided through various market mechanisms. Granted that the society will be more rational and accepting of science, there will also be large cultural drives that will push toward positive norms, such as the peaceful raising of children.

 

There is a lot of material on this. The two listed below

http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf

http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf

 

I would argue that the effects would behave exponentially with the generations due to successive implementation of verified theory, that people would become less and less dangerous, and the business of protection would begin to focus on more threats of nature and the individual. I would also argue that many processes that courts are needed for now could be handled even without a third party, unless you consider reason and evidence a third party.

[Iggy]

Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate both perspectives. I should perhaps have been more explicit and stated I was thinking of the use of the law for ethical purposes, that is contract law and for retribution, rather than for advantage or to avoid justice.

 

To summarise the issue of how lawful justice could work in an anarchic environment then:

 

DROs would be available to resolve disputes.

 

The cost of resolving a dispute would be less without the involvement of the state and justice would be accessible to more people.

 

The level of criminality in a society with healthily parented children would be reduced.

 

There would be a trend towards decreasing crime levels in such a society.

 

 

Thinking of a solution to someone who seeks retribution from someone that has broken a contract or caused a loss, individuals and companies could be created to monitor the 'credit score' or trustworthiness of a party (like ebay reviews sellers). For any particular instance however the individual is at risk of a loss although they could presumably be insured for an unsecured loss.

 

In instances of criminal damage individuals could be excluded from normal trade and services by individuals signing up to withdraw services or funding to criminal members of society. Their utilities and even currency and employment could be removed.

 

I'm less clear on how an Anarchist society would treat murderers and those who have declared their intention to harm others? A private police force/mercenary organisation could be funded to remove or imprison dangerous members of society, but how would the 'violence' used against them in imprisoning him or her be justified, and not be abused? How practically might an organisation have a right to act violently against an individual, given just cause, yet be kept in check from acting violently against peaceful members of society?

[Mister Mister]

It is also worth noting that one of the reasons lawyers, like doctors, are so expensive, is because of the licensing racket, and the strict state-defined education requirements.  In Lysander Spooner's day, all you had to do was apprentice with a lawyer for two years, and even then he had issues with the licensing requirements.  It is likely that, in order to mediate disputes, write and interpret contracts, have good language skills, etc, will not require 8 years of school or cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a competent lawyer in a free society.