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… is Bruce Benson (on page 281 of his 1990 volume, The Enterprise of Law [2]) quoting the great legal scholar and philosopher Lon Fuller [3] (from page 174 of the 1981 collection of some of Fuller’s essays, The Principles of Social Order [4]) (footnote deleted; ellipses original to Benson):
As Fuller noted, “it is clear that property and contract were … functioning social institutions before state-made laws existed or were even conceived of.”