"Law comes from nation-states. That's just what law is."
That's a common belief. Let's take a closer look at it.
Where do nation-states get the authority to make law?
"What do you mean, where do they get it? They're the source of it."
If they have it, they must have gotten it from somewhere. What gives a nation-state the authority to decide right and wrong for millions of people? Where does it come from?
Almost everyone who answers this question gives one of four answers. Let's go through them.
Answer 1: "From power"
"They get it from the fact that they can enforce it. If they make a law and you break it, they can punish you. Whether the law is good or evil, just or unjust, doesn't matter. What makes it real is the power to enforce it. Whoever has the biggest army makes the rules."
With respect, that is how savages think. If law and power are the same thing, there's no point calling it "law." It's simply the will of the most powerful person. Law, authority, and morality drop out of the picture entirely, and all that's left is who has the biggest gun. That isn't order. It's lawlessness.
Test it with a simple case. A gang holds up a store. For those few minutes, the gang has the power. So may the gang pass a "law" declaring stickups legal, and so commit no crime by pointing guns at the shoppers?
If the stickup is a crime only because the police are coming to restore the old balance of power, when does it become a crime? When the first squad car pulls up? When the robbers are disarmed? Or was it a crime the whole time, despite the gang's "law"? How could it be, if the gang held the power and law comes from power?
And what if the robbers get away with the money and are never caught? Then the state didn't have the power in that situation. And if law comes from power, the state's law wasn't law there, and the robbery was no crime.
Follow that through, and the phrase "successful criminal" becomes a contradiction. Anyone who escapes punishment was never a criminal at all, because escaping retroactively makes the act lawful. If they haven't been punished, they haven't done anything wrong. That is what you believe if you believe law comes from its own enforcement.
Of course you don't believe that. The robbery was a crime the moment it began, whether or not anyone was ever caught. Which means law does not come from power.
Power and authority are two different things. Many people in power have no moral authority. Many people with moral authority have no power.
"Maybe so, but that's the way it is. Try explaining your philosophy to a police officer or a judge. See how far you get."
That a person can do something doesn't mean they have the right to do it. A police officer or a judge may have power, but they have moral authority to use it only when they use it in the service of what is genuinely right. Their power doesn't give them the right to decide what's right. Morality stands on its own, regardless of who holds the weapons.
The whole story of human progress has been a long series of admissions that might does not make right. If you insist that it does, you're dragging humanity backward.
"All right, scratch that. I don't believe might makes right. I'm not a caveman."
Good. Then where do nation-states get the authority?
Answer 2: "From the People"
"From We the People. When most of the people want something to be law, the government has the right to make it law. That's democracy. Don't you believe in democracy?"
That's an important answer, and it needs a page of its own: But laws come from the consensus of the People! The short version: no one can give away what they don't have. If no individual voter has the authority to make law for others, then a majority of voters doesn't have it either, and neither do their representatives.
Answer 3: "From God"
"Then it comes from God. Our nation gets its authority to make law from the Lord."
That one has its own page too: But laws come from God! In short, even for those who believe in God, the claim that a particular government is God's authorized lawmaker has never survived scrutiny. And the oldest religious traditions of law point straight back to natural law.
Answer 4: "From being a nation"
"Fine. Not power, not consensus, not God. It comes from being a nation. Nations make law. That's what nations are."
What does being a nation have to do with the authority to define right and wrong?
Suppose someone never consented to the nation's rule. Why are they subject to it? Because the nation made a "law" saying they're subject to its laws? That's circular.
Who decides which land belongs to which nation? The nations themselves? Then what happens when two nations claim the same land? Who's right?
And if a nation can do this, why not a town, or a village? Can a village declare itself a nation and make its own law? If not, why not? Not big enough? Then what's the minimum population? Does anyone know? Or does the requirement shift to suit whoever wants power at the moment?
None of these contradictions can be reconciled. A system built on them makes no sense.
So where do they get it?
"Not from power. Not from consensus. Not from God, or at least my government isn't God's representative. Not from being a nation. So... from nowhere, I guess."
Exactly.
Nation-states have no authority to make law, because there is nowhere for that authority to come from. And they don't need it. The law already exists. It is not passed or legislated. It is built into the structure of reality, and it is the same on both sides of every border.
What the nation-state model actually produces is not law but its opposite. If the people who would break the law can simply rewrite it so there's nothing left to break, that is not a legal system. It's chaos, and it is the system currently in use by every nation-state on Earth, from pole to pole.
"But we need some law. We can't have chaos where everyone does whatever they want."
Of course we need law. And we have it. That is what the rest of this site is about.
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Other objections: This is crazy, silly, woo-woo! · What gives you the authority? · Laws come from God · Laws come from the consensus of the People