Robert Higgs on law without the state

Nowadays some people are either too dense to recognize or too stubborn to admit that we can have law -- all the law that justice and our needs require -- without the state. For centuries, however, through the ages in which the natural law was seen as the foundation of all true law, philosophers and jurists avowed that true law is not made, either by kings or by legislators, but discovered in the conventions that have developed spontaneously among people over the ages for settling their disputes and living in harmony with one another. As my dear friend Donald J. Boudreaux ceaselessly insists, legislation is not law. Indeed, very often it stands in complete opposition to real law. One of the most remarkable modern works along these lines is F. A. Hayek's trilogy "Law, Legislation, and Liberty." - Robert Higgs