Many political philosophers assume the state can coherently reform a society's legal system to realize just, society-wide distributive outcomes. Gerald Gaus invoked social complexity to highlight the limitations of this ambition. Complexity theory holds that interdependent social interaction in large-scale societies leads to unpredictable outcomes. For Gaus, complexity constrains what the state can accomplish. The state does not know how to reform the legal system to achieve ambitious distributive goals. However, Gaus did not model the state itself as a complex system. This is the contribution of this paper. I argue that the state is not a unitary agent that comprehensively oversees the legal system. Rather, the state is a network of interaction between myriad political agents and the legal system is an emergent outcome of this interaction—the result of human action but not an overall design.
ArthurB (2021) Foundations of complexity economics. Nature Reviews Physics3: 136–145.
2.
BacheIFlindersM (eds) (2004) Multi-Level Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3.
BlakeM (2001) Distributive justice, state coercion, and autonomy. Philosophy & Public Affairs30(3): 257–296.
4.
BrownB (2023) The romantic lie in the brain: collective agency, moral responsibility, and the state. Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy10: 57–85.
5.
DworkinR (2002) Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, 4. printingCambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
6.
FergusonA (1995) An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
7.
FreemanSR (2007) Rawls. Routledge Philosophers. London; New York: Routledge.
8.
GausG (1998) Why all welfare states (including laissez-faire ones) are unreasonable. Social Philosophy and Policy15(2): 1–33.
9.
GausG (2012) The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://dx-doi-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/10.1017/CBO9780511780844.
10.
GausG (2016) The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
11.
GausG (2021) The Open Society and Its Complexities. Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12.
HayekF (1945) The use of knowledge in society. The American Economic Review35(4): 519–530.
13.
HayekF (1967a) Degrees of explanation. In: Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3–21.
14.
HayekF (1967b) The theory of complex phenomena. In: Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 22–42.
15.
HayekF (1982) Law, Legislation and Liberty: Vol. 1 Rules and Order. Abingdon: Routledge.
16.
HayekF (2002) Competition as a discovery procedure. Translated by Snow Marcellus. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics5(3): 9–23.
17.
HayekF (2006) The Constitution of Liberty. London: Routledge.
18.
HobbesT (1984) De Cive. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
19.
HoogheLMarksG (2003) Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance. American Political Science Review97(2): 233–243.
20.
IsmaelJ (2016) How Physics Makes Us Free. New York: Oxford University Press.
21.
JamesA (2005) Power in social organization as the subject of justice. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly86(1): 25–49.
22.
Lawford-SmithH (2019) Not In Their Name: Are Citizens Culpable For Their States’ Actions?1st ed.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
LewisP (2012) Emergent properties in the work of Friedrich Hayek. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization82(2–3): 368–378.
24.
LewisP (2016) The emergence of ‘emergence’ in the work of F. A. Hayek: a historical analysis. History of Political Economy48(1): 111–150.
25.
LindblomCE (1959) The science of ‘muddling through’. Public Administration Review19(2): 79.
26.
LindblomCE (1965) The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision Making through Mutual Adjustment. New York: Free Press.
McGinnisM (ed) (1999) Polycentricity and Local Public Economies: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.16061.
30.
Meckled-GarciaS (2008) On the very idea of cosmopolitan justice: constructivism and international agency. Journal of Political Philosophy16(3): 245–271.
31.
MillerD (2003) Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
32.
MorrisCW (2002) An Essay on the Modern State. 1. paperback ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
NagelT (1991) Equality and Partiality. New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
NagelT (2005) The problem of global justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs33(2): 113–147.
35.
NorthDCWallisJJWeingastBR (2009) Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
PasternakA (2013) Limiting states’ corporate responsibility*. Journal of Political Philosophy21(4): 361–381.
38.
PettitP (2014) How to tell if a group is an agent. In: LackeyJ (eds) Essays in Collective Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 97–121.
39.
PoggeTW (1992) Cosmopolitanism and sovereignty. Ethics103(1): 48–75.
40.
RawlsJ (1996) Political Liberalism. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
41.
RawlsJ (1999) A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. 2nd ed. Cambridge: The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press.
42.
SchmittC (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. University of Chicago Press ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
43.
SmithA (2009) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by R. H. Campbell. 11. print. Indianapolis, Ind: Liberty Fund.
44.
StilzA (2011) Collective responsibility and the state. Journal of Political Philosophy19(2): 190–208.
45.
ValentiniL (2017) The natural duty of justice in non-ideal circumstances: on the moral demands of institution building and reform. European Journal of Political Theory20(1): 45–66.
46.
VermeuleA (2016) Law’s Abnegation: From Law’s Empire to the Administrative State. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
47.
VibertF (2007) The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of Powers. Leiden: Cambridge University Press.
