Law is the state’s instrument for creating a desired type of citizen

Evidence

This means that a group of individuals can always come together and can always give itself laws and a legislature; it can give itself a constitution. If that group of individuals does not have the capacity for commerce, handicrafts, and agriculture, or the ability to form an army, a magistrature, and so on, it will never, in historical terms, be a nation. It might be a nation in juridical terms, but never in historical terms. A contract, a law, or a consensus can never really create a nation. Conversely, it is perfectly possible for a group of individuals to have the wherewithal, the historical ability to develop works, to exercise functions, without ever having been given a common law anda legislature. Such people would, in a sense, be in possession of the substantive and functional elements of the nation; they are not in possession of its formal elements. They are capable of nationhood, but they will not be a nation. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Legal rules defining the ways in which valid contracts or wills or marriages are made do not require persons to act in certain ways whether they wish to or not. Such laws do not impose duties or obligations. Instead, they provide individuals with facilities for realizing their wishes, by conferring legal powers upon them to create, by certain specified procedures and subject to certain conditions, structures of rights and duties within the coercive framework of the law. — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 175 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Certain laws provide facilities for realizing wishes instead of imposing duties. — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 175; Private citizens’ discriminatory acts get reinforced by state security policies; Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235

Related

• Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities (similarity 0.86)
• States use law to shape a specific type of citizen and civilization (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities #qualifies (0.82) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235
• Certain laws provide facilities for realizing wishes instead of imposing duties. #qualifies (0.75) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 175
• Private citizens’ discriminatory acts get reinforced by state security policies #exemplifies (0.75)