Gary Chartier: Anarchy and Legal Order (Cambridge, 2013)

Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

ISBN: 9781107032286 | 428 pages | PDF

This book elaborates and defends the idea of law without the state. Animated by a vision of peaceful, voluntary cooperation as a social ideal and building on a careful account of non-aggression, it features a clear explanation of why the state is illegitimate, dangerous, and unnecessary. It proposes an understanding of how law enforcement in a stateless society 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, anti-capitalist, and socialist traditions.

Reviews

"Anarchism's case, against the state and for the viability and desirability of a polycentric legal order, receives its most challenging and detailed articulation in Chartier's book." -- Hillel Steiner, FBA, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Manchester

"Those who defend the legitimacy of the state (even a minimal one) will be forced to reconsider their views by Gary Chartier's clear, sparkling, and trenchant defense of anarchism. This is required reading, not only within the libertarian movement, but by anyone who works in political philosophy." -- Fernando R. Tesón, Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar and Professor of Law, Florida State University