Reflections on Legal Polycentrism

Abstract

The author argues that one of the factors that allow governments to perform acts that deprive citizens of their freedoms is the sense of legitimacy of these acts, accepted by the public. The average citizen believes that the government is their rightful sovereign, and it would be wrong to refuse to obey their commands. This sense of legitimacy – that is a myth for the author – was nurtured by State intellectuals over time. The important rhetorical argument of historical examples of anarchist societies that worked and contemporary evidence of lawless elements operatively in state societies show that was not always so, it is not so in all places and in all respects, even now, and that does not it must be so. Casey illustrates his argument in favor of anarchic societies with the example of the ancient Irish society, until the seventeenth century, and shows their similarities with Tom Bell’s legal polycentrism. Finally, he discusses restorative justice.