Coercion and the Nature of Law (Oxford Legal Philosophy)

Description

Himma presents the argument that people are self-interested beings who must compete in a world of scarcity for everything they need to survive and thrive. The need to compete for resources naturally leads to conflict that can breach the peace, and threatens the ability to live together in a community and reap the social benefits of cooperation. Law only functions as a system if it can maintain the peace enough for community to continue, and thus systems of law cannot succeed in doing anything that we want systems of law to do unless they back laws prohibiting violent assaults on persons or property with the threat of punishment; without sanctions, we would descend into something resembling a condition of war-of-all-against-all. We adopt coercive systems of regulation precisely to avoid having to live under such conditions.