Legal Pluralism, Arbitration, and State Formation: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia's Quaker Court, 1682–1772

Abstract

Legal centralization in British America was characterized by the passing of arbitration from the community level to the colonial courts. As a consequence, when the 1765 Stamp Act raised the cost of court business, colonists were at a loss for alternatives. This paper addresses the question of why, at this point, colonists did not return to earlier, non-state forms of arbitration. It offers an explanation by providing a detailed empirical study of an alternative American legal forum: the Philadelphia Quaker monthly meeting. While busy arbitrating disputes in the early colonial period, it declined from around 1720. Contrary to what might be expected, this decline was not the consequence of state efforts to marginalize competing institutions. Rather, the local Quaker population abandoned their community legal forum in favor of the public courts. This was likely due to the Quaker court's reliance on reputation-based instruments for enforcement. As Philadelphia's population grew, the meeting's practice of pressuring culprits into compliance through public shaming lost its edge. Accordingly, Friends moved their legal business to the public courts. The paper contributes to the debates on the legal pluralism of empires, the history of arbitration, and state formation in the Atlantic.