The Voluntary Law Development Association is dedicated to building, maintaining, and promoting a detailed system of alternative laws designed for voluntary adoption by individuals, using community-based development models similar to those used for open-source software.  Rather than imposing laws by political fiat or concentrating capital, VLDA aims to distribute law-making power to the very atom of society: the individual.  By concurring in the selection of preferred laws, individuals coalesce into communities, here called “voluntary law societies” (VLSs).  This radical grass-roots approach to law entails numerous complexities and issues that VLDA aims to bring to light and develop solutions for, as part of laying  groundwork for a more equitable, free, and peaceful future society.

This website aspires to someday be one of the portals for accessing and interacting with a developing body of open-source voluntary laws.  Currently, work is focused on developing a conceptual framework to guide future development and organization of voluntary laws, with only a few sketchy examples of voluntary laws developed, which may be accessed via the links on this page.  The laws themselves and the  details of organizing this new body of law — personal honor codes, really — remain to be determined.  To facilitate comparisons and flexibility, legal codes may be written in modular form and semantically organized by systems, categories, and any number of levels of subcategories or subsystems.  To qualify for inclusion, each code module must be designed for the peaceful resolution of disputes between persons, must adhere to the principle of equality under the law, and must assume that any entity applying the law to render a judgment or any entity enforcing such judgment does not claim any exclusive right of action beyond what is personally and voluntarily granted by the disputants.

A system or subsystem is any internally consistent set of code modules, meaning that all of the modules in the set are operable without logical contradiction.  Otherwise contradictory modules or sets of modules (i.e., systems) can be made consistent with one another by operation of a conflict of laws module.  Conflict of laws modules can be used to join otherwise contradictory systems of laws, essentially making each of the reconciled systems into subsystems of a larger system.  A universal principle for resolution of legal conflicts is proposed here, called The Rule Of The WEaker Tool (“TROTWET”), for use where there is no other rule for resolution of legal conflicts agreed to by the parties.  Modules of a system do not need to be identified as belonging to a particular system or subsystem, but such information is generally helpful and should be provided if appropriate.

Categories or subcategories can be any useful subdivision of a system of laws.  They should be designed to enhance readability and usability of a system of laws by breaking it down into smaller, logically related chucks.

Also contemplated is a Commentary on the system of voluntary laws, which should provide examples and explanations for how specific modules might work in practice.

Actually development of these new laws will proceed under an open-source model, using suitable on-line tools that remain to be developed.

Thank you for your interest in the VLDA and have a nice day!