Coordination

Abstract

This chapter examines problems of coordination that could arise under personalized law, where different people are subject to different rules guiding their behavior. While earlier chapters of the book focused on individual actors and their personal legal environments, this chapter shifts to look at joint activity—how the interaction between people could be affected by personalized law. Would a personalized law regime that optimizes the atomistic parts result in more social harm, by neglecting the composite whole? It is often noted, correctly, that standardization and uniformity are needed for well-coordinated activity, to help people anticipate what others will do and synchronize their own actions. The chapter argues, however, that personalized law has a surprising potential to advance new forms of coordination. The chapter examines rules of traffic, methods of contracting, procedure in litigation, and the forms of property rights (numerus clausus), and argues that a properly designed personalized law regime could potentially achieve coordination in these spheres despite the greater variation and the non-uniformity of rules and of individual actions.