Legal Equilibrium

Ethics and power are two social phenomena which may exist independently of each other. It is possible to conceive a social field in which coordination would be either of the ethical type, without any participation of power, or of the imperative type, without any element of ethics. A social group in which both instruments of legal motivation are strong and closely correlated with each other necessarily tends to restore its initial or normal situation. This tendency might be called legal equilibrium. Ethics and power are not two coordinated or subordinated phenomena. Their overlapping section is law. These propositions may be considered as a restatement of the basic working hypothesis. The propositions to be verified are the following: legal rules are recognized by group-members; legal rules are obeyed by group-members; legal rules are recognized by the members of active power centers; legal rules are supported by them. In these propositions the essence of the basic hypothesis is condensed.