Contemporary American Theories on the Violent Causes of the Origin of State and Law

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Abstract

In the contemporary world, where debates about state power, law, justice, and the effectiveness of public administration continue unabated, understanding the origins of these categories is becoming increasingly important. Contemporary American theories have made a significant contribution to elucidating not only the causes of their emergence but also the resulting nature of these categories. Drawing on the fundamental legacy of classical political and legal thought, these authors, substantiate the role of coercion, conflict, and war in catalyzing the emergence of the first state formations and legal systems. Accordingly, a detailed examination of this issue is particularly relevant for legal theory. The purpose of this article is to identify the significance of violent causes in the emergence of the state and law in contemporary American theories. This goal is pursued by analyzing the contributions of individual theories to understanding the historical process of the formation of state and legal institutions, with particular attention to their empirical foundations. The theoretical basis of the study consists of the works of contemporary American representatives of the Chicago School of Economic Analysis of Law, as well as scholars from related social sciences, including political science, sociology, and history, along with game theory as a branch of mathematical analysis applicable to law. The research methodology relies on tools traditional to historical and legal scholarship. General philosophical and scientific methods are employed while among the specific scientific methods, in addition to legal ones, historical methods play an important role, including historical-genetic, historical-comparative, and historical-typological approaches. The study concludes that a high frequency of conflicts and clashes does indeed stimulate the emergence of centralized authority to protect against external and internal threats and, as a consequence, leads to the formation of the state and law as mechanisms for creating public goods through taxation. However, this is not the only factor, and violent causes should be considered alongside other social, economic, and cultural determinants of state and legal development.

About the authors

Igor V. Kolosov

A.S. Griboyedov Moscow University

Author for correspondence.
Email: i.v.kolosov@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9407-8340
SPIN-code: 9151-1394

Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Theory and History of State and Law, Faculty of Law

111396, Moscow, Bldg. 66A Zeleny Prospekt

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