Why the State?

I offer two questions for the price of one: Why do so many jurisprudential theories focus on the state? And what is it about the State that gives it a special place in our social arrangements? I do not mean these to address all aspects of states. They are questions about the law or legal systems of states.\nWe have to be open to a negative answer to the second question, thus being critical of jurisprudential theories that focus more or less exclusively on the state. That need not deny that states have their own legal systems. It could merely amount to denying them privileged status in the philosophy of law, placing them as one of various legal formations. Furthermore, once we understand the relations between state law and other kinds of law-related systems, we may well conclude that even if state law is in some ways theoretically and practically the most challenging or the most important kind of legal system, it is better understood alongside other such systems rather than through theories that focus on it to the exclusion of the others. Even if state law is in some ways the pre-eminent form of law, in the course of the inquiry, we may find that – by examining it alongside other forms of law – our understanding of state law as well as of law in general changes. That in itself could be an important outcome. It will inevitably change the way we see state law and its relations to other kinds of laws.