This book elaborates and defends the idea of law without the state. Animated by a vision
of peaceful, voluntary cooperation as a social ideal and building on a careful account of
nonaggression, it features a clear explanation of why the state is illegitimate, dangerous,
and unnecessary. It proposes an understanding of how law enforcement in a stateless
society could be legitimate and what the optimal substance of law without the state
might be, suggests ways in which a stateless legal order could foster the growth of a culture
of freedom, and situates the project it elaborates in relation to leftist, anticapitalist,
and socialist traditions.
gary chartier is Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Ton
and Vi Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. He is
the author of Economic Justice and Natural Law (2009), The Conscience of an Anarchist
(2011), and The Analogy of Love (2007), as well as the coeditor (with Charles W. Johnson)
of Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate
Power, and Structural Poverty (2011).