“I suspect that in many ways a free market in law would resemble the situation in Medieval Europe” — I’m an emigrant from such country. Sometimes funny place to

“I suspect that in many ways a free market in law would resemble the situation in Medieval Europe” — I’m an emigrant from such country. Sometimes funny place to visit, impossible to live, hard to do business. “Disputants could select among several fora” — the author forgot about one very important “if”. Disputants could select among several fora IF they were from the same social class. The fun starts when they’re from different social classes. In nowadays Russia, a public prosecutor or a police officer can literally kill whomever he wants. Unless the victims were from equal or higher social strata, 99% such cases will be closed, 1% will be presented to a court like “a person assaulted a public prosecutor and was shot dead as a reasonable self-defense act”. The western society isn’t stratified that much, almost no one thinks it’s OK to kill people regardless of how many stars are on the killer’s epaulets. However, there are still many cases with great asymmetry between two dealing parties. Like when you buy electricity for your home. Don’t you think your electricity supplier would love to add “no disputes are allowed, I’m the final authority” to your contract, if they could? If you don’t like that contract, they don’t care — you only bring 0.00001% of their income, however they bring you 100% of your electricity, and in many places you don’t even have much choice.