Law and order originally meant state rule limited to law itself

Evidence

Law and order*: these two notions, [to which] I will try to retu~ next w~-_· and whose destiny in the thought of the American Right you are familiar with, are not just slogans for a stubborn Atuerican extreme Right born in the Midwest. Law and orderoriginally had a very precise meaning which can be traced back well beyond the liberalism I am talking about.t Law and order means that the state, the public authorities, win only ever intervene in the economic orderintl1e-formohhelawana.,lf _ the public authorities really· are limited. to these legal interv~ntiofi5, within this law an economic order will be able to emerge which will be at the same time both the effect and principle of its own regulation. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 939

Categorization

• DEFINE: Unpacks ‘law and order’ as an economic-governance concept predating the American Right slogan — a useful precision on a familiar phrase.
• XREF: This etymology of ‘law and order’ as market-rule concept connects to the reader’s work on how phrases carry buried institutional genealogies. — connects to: The Rule of law separates universal laws from particular administrative measures — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 910; Rule of law in economics restricts the state to purely formal legislation — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 923; Police power let states regulate contracts for health, safety, or morality — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3212