Private System of Rules

• Semester: Spring 2026
• Course ID: 296W
• Credit Hours: 2
• Unique: 29909

Description

This class is intended to be interesting and fun, and to encourage you to explore an interesting corner of the world  through the lens of your experience in studying and thinking about law.  It will be a learning experience for all of us.

The basic idea is that while we study only governmental legal systems (or in the case of international law, a system of rules that means to emulate  governmental legal systems), we are surrounded by private systems of rules which we could think of as eccentric legal systems. If we think of private systems of rules in this way, we may be able both to understand them better and to learn things from them that may improve our understanding of governmental legal systems. I want to set you loose to find and study the private system of your choice.

I have in mind the broadest possible range of private systems of rules. Here are just a few examples:

• The cattle farmers of Marin County who have their own rules of trespass, repair and remuneration.
• The lobster fishermen of Maine, who sawed in half the boat of one of their cohort who violated their rules about the location and ownership of traps (I’m not sure whether they sawed the boat length-wise or width-wise).
• Sports leagues, with their external rule-making and adjudication, and their internal games.
• Informal pick-up basketball games, some of which are populated by very serious players and precise rules, but no referees.
• Organized churches with elaborate rules and hierarchies.
• The internal content of some religions, in which figures like the devil seem to be part of an enforcement mechanism.
• Street vendors and how they enforce their respective locations and territories.
• The actual Mafia, or the fictive Mafia of the Sopranos or of the Godfather series. Other organized criminal organizations, like the drug cartels.
• Home owner associations.
• Large companies; trade unions.
• I’m not sure what to think about this, but possibly complex insect colonies like honeybees…there is a fascinating book called Honeybee Democracy, which is about the extraordinary process by which hives of bees choose new homes.

I am just scratching the surface. But I hope the point is obvious: I mean to encourage consideration of as wide and as imaginative a variety of systems of rules as possible from which you will choose one to study.

The class will be divided into four phases.  In the first phase we will discuss common features of governmental legal systems. In the second phase we will read some studies of private systems of rules. In the third phase we will discuss your project, helping you choose and focus your research. In the fourth phase, you will present your early findings to the group.

The class will not be graded on the curve. Your grade will be based on class participation and on your paper describing and analyzing the private system of rules you study.