Law is the raft of accumulated formal rules with the objective of optimizing the retention of power by the executive social order. By this means ongoing access to state resources is ensured. The consequences of transgression are imposed upon the general citizenry by education and persuasion where possible but, ultimately, by means of force.

The control and restraint of groups and individuals by means of such a state-organized justice system of retribution, has much more serious outcome implications than those resulting from simply breaking the rules of a grammar or a game. Life itself, freedom and rights are incorporated in the consequences of the laws of a state. Once apprehended, the individual can quickly lose all control over their participation in the society of the state where there is an effective policing authority to impose the system of justice. Laws without a functional police and justice system are simply irrelevant.

Whilst laws are contrived to control many facets of state activity, nevertheless, the individual or group will ultimately be confronted by the apparatus and organizations of state. Those laws concerning such matters as taxes, trade, immigration, transport, conscription and the like, are created in the self-interest of the state and bring any transgressor into immediate conflict with the state and its self-interest. If they cannot overcome the intentions of the state by some means, devious or otherwise, then they will experience its physical will. On the other hand, laws concerning such matters as murder, theft and rape are created for the purpose of reassuring the citizenry that their individual rights are protected by the state.

Such matters however, do not normally threaten the integrity of the state and despite public protestations to the contrary, the administration of justice is often imbued with impotence and indifference. Impotent, because protecting individual citizens from the predations of robbery and physical violence is essentially impossible. Indifferent, because the violation of one individual by other individual only rarely impinges on the security of the state. So indifferent does the state sometimes become, that even the rights of the victims are diminished in an attempt to compensate for its impotence. Thus when an individual kills in defending his or her life or property, the intended victim becomes an easy target upon which the state can demonstrate its power. The state usually has considerable difficulty in establishing the identity of the culprit of a physical violence, and a miscarriage of justice is a very real possibility. This is especially so in a system of adverserial reconstruction, where the objective is to win the case by persuasion, rather than to uncover and agree to the probable sequence of events. The state does not have the power to protect all individuals. If an intended victim has the opportunity to administer a justice of self-preservation directly upon the perpetrating culprit, then sanctioning such action would go some way to supporting the rights of victims.

Totalitarian dictatorships and religious hierocracies become so paranoid about their continuity, that every minute aspect of life is legislated for and internal revolution only becomes possible when external disturbances disrupt the structure. Even in a supposed democracy, where the laws in general are presented as being the result of majority influence, some of the laws are always biased towards the incumbent group being able to retain power as much as possible. Laws are enacted about who can vote and where and how, and what promotion facilities are available and so on, so that minority groups are kept exactly where they are. The executive members of a state enjoy the privileges and want to be there because of their ability to recompense their intrinsic worth with an adequate flow of state assets. Laws and a justice system are the means of sustaining their status quo.