The Law and Judiciary

The law, as formalized relations of private property, has a history as long as marketplace society. It arose to regulate relations of commodity exchange, and it expanded as these exchange relations progressively came to define all social and economic relations. As capital, private property evolved to create distinct territorial jurisdictions, asserting itself in the form of law codes and the state. As nations, private property developed to embrace all aspects of exchange within and between these jurisdictions, creating a world of legalities, manifest as national legal systems and international law and the rise of diplomacy. Competing embodiments of national capital, however, can tolerate diplomacy only as long as there is no advantage to illegalities and war, the expression of competitive capital by other means. The historical journey of law both within and between nations has moved from the long development of a world of lawfulness to the contrasting hurried normalization of lawlessness, as evidenced by the expanding ‘prerogative state,’ embodied arbitrariness, and the near abandonment of diplomacy by several major industrial powers.