Abstract
A central assumption in much contemporary scholarship is that a central shift has taken place over the course of the last four decades: a shift from a world largely centered on public authority to a world that is increasingly dominated by private authority. The central expression of this shift is seen to be a concurring move from public to private law and thus from legislation to contract as the central legal instrument structuring economic as well as other social processes.
While developments in this direction can certainly be observed, this article provides a more nuanced perspective. Outlining a long-term historical perspective, this article reconstructs the manifold and volatile dynamic between institutionalized forms of public and private authority. It does soon the basis of the argument that, in the course of this evolutionary process, the very function and meaning of both public and private authority has been fundamentally altered. This alteration implies the transformation of both dimensions into functionally limited and more specific phenomena. With this background, it becomes possible to argue that societal evolution is characterized by a dual expansion of both public and private forms of authority …
Kjaer, Poul F, From the Private to the Public to the Private? Historicizing the Evolution of Public and Private Authority (May 9, 2018). Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol 25, 1 (Spring 2018), pp 13 – 36.
First posted 2018-05-23 07:24:40
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