Merchants broke the bonds of localized political constraints during the tenth and eleventh centuries to establish the constitutional foundations of international commercial law as we see it today. The medieval “Law Merchant” was an international legal system that governed without the...

The conflict over scarce resources in the Hobbesian jungle may be avoided if rules of obligation delineating property rights develop along with institutions of governance. One possibility is a “duress contract” as the strongest individual threatens others who agree to enslavement. Thus,...