Lab e3: Contracts, courts and conflict resolution

On OboxPlanet, there are no state courts and legislated laws. Like on earth in the past, people make contracts voluntarily and when they have conflicts, whether over a contract or otherwise, they consult a mediator.

On earth, this used to be a trustworthy person in the family or in the community. As time went by, there developed a custom of how to handle particular cases and conflicts and arbiters started applying these codes of law, like the Justinian law code in roman times, common law in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the code Napoleon on the European continent. This made it easier for contracting parties and arbiters, and that’s how things still work on OboxPlanet.

Everything else is but the application of this simple principle. Conflicts are ultimately disputes about property, including people’s bodies and the questions on who rightfully owns the disputed property and whether there was a unjustified violation of this property. The basics are simple, the details a matter of experience and legal scholarship.

It may be one of the most exciting fields of legal research and scholarship available today.

What experiences on Earth, past and present, help us understand life on the OboxPlanet?

Once again, a look at how things were developing in the American “Wild West”, without a state law structure, can give us real experiences from history. Settlers would form temporary “constitutions” while they were travelling for months together. Quoting from “The Not So Wild Wild West”: 

“The rules of a travelling company organised at Kanesville, Iowa, provided that “Resolved, that in case of any dispute arising between any members of the Company, they shall be referred to three arbiters, one chosen by each party, and one by the two chosen, whose decision shall be final”. The methods of settling disputes varied among the companies, but in nearly all cases, some means of arbitration were specified to insure “that the rights of each emigrant are protected and enforced”.   https://cdn.mises.org/3_1_2_0.pdf

Here are some examples of the use of private conflict resolution systems as alternatives to traditional legal processes:

1.Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Services: Utilized in business, construction, employment, and healthcare, ADR methods like mediation, arbitration, and negotiation facilitate structured processes to reach solutions outside of court.

2.Financial Services: The financial industry employs private conflict resolution systems, such as arbitration, to settle disputes between institutions, investors, and clients in areas like securities, banking, insurance, and investments.

3.Online Dispute Resolution (ODR): With e-commerce’s growth, online platforms integrate private ODR systems to address buyer-seller disputes concerning transactions, product quality, and service delivery.

4.Construction and Real Estate: Private conflict resolution mechanisms like arbitration settle disputes arising from construction contracts, property transactions, and disagreements between contractors, developers, and clients.

5.Sports: Sports organisations use private dispute resolution systems, such as arbitration and mediation, to handle conflicts among athletes, clubs, and stakeholders, including contract disputes, disciplinary actions, and doping allegations.

Hans Herman Hoppe illustrates this with another example:

“Private conflict resolution is already common practice in international,  anarchic, business transactions.

Just look at how cross-border disputes are settled today.  Internationally, there is a kind of anarchy in law, because there is no world state that regulates everything.

What do the citizens in the border triangle of Basel, i.e. Germans, French and Swiss, do when conflicts arise between them?  They will first of all turn to their own jurisdiction.  If there is no agreement, independent mediators are called in to decide the case.  Anyone who does not comply with their judgements is not only in breach of contract, he becomes a leper in the business world with whom nobody wants to do business.

Are there more disputes between the citizens of this region than between the citizens of Cologne and Düsseldorf?  I have never heard anything to that effect.  Surely this shows that interpersonal disputes can be settled peacefully without a state as a legal monopolist. “

Now it’s your turn:

Have you had experiences with state courts and what do you think private arbitrage would have done differently?

Things we could learn and implement from the OboxPlanet: