Law, Discipline, ChatGPT, and the Turning Point of the War on Drugs
Law did not originate as a command issued by the state. Like language, it emerged gradually from social practice. Early law developed out of custom, trade, and repeated interaction as a way to prevent conflicts from escalating into violence and, when disputes did arise, to resolve them peacefully. Only later was law colonized by political power and formalized as the main structure through which the state exercised authority.
In this earlier role, law functioned as a conflict-resolution technology. Its defining features of general rules, public procedures, evidence, argument, and final judgment, were practical tools designed to bring disputes to an end. Law produced closure. Once a judgment was rendered and a sanction imposed, the conflict was meant to be settled, allowing social life to continue without lingering retaliation.
For much of modern history, even as states expanded their reach, this basic function remained intact. Law governed disagreements between parties and limited the use of force by insisting that coercion be justified, proportionate, and reviewable.
The War on Drugs marks a decisive transition away from this model.
Formally, the legal system remained in place. Legislatures passed laws, courts adjudicated cases, and sentences were imposed. Substantively, however, the purpose of law shifted. Rather than resolving disputes about particular acts, law became a strategy of discipline - a means of classifying populations, managing risk, and incapacitating categories of people deemed socially dangerous.
Mandatory minimums, sentencing guidelines, and plea bargaining replaced individualized judgment with standardized outcomes. The goal was no longer to settle a conflict between parties, but to remove a problem from circulation. Law still spoke in the language of justice, but it increasingly functioned as an administrative tool of control.
This moment is crucial because it shows that discipline did not replace law outright. It moved into law, repurposing it from within. Legal form survived, but legal function changed. The qualities that once made law effective at resolving conflict - deliberation, contestation, and finality - came to be seen as obstacles to efficient governance.
Once law had been successfully reworked as a disciplinary instrument, its remaining procedural constraints began to appear unnecessary. If the objective is prevention rather than judgment, management rather than resolution, then courts become slow, unpredictable, and overly visible.
At this point, disciplinary power no longer needs law at all.
Contemporary sanctions regimes reflect this next step. Individuals are designated and restricted not because a dispute has been adjudicated, but because they are classified as risks. There is no trial to conclude and no verdict to bring closure. Review is limited and often deferred. The condition imposed is not punishment for a past act, but ongoing administrative control.
The case of Jacques Baud illustrates this evolution. He is not charged with a crime or judged through an adversarial process. Instead, his analysis is treated as a form of strategic risk. He remains free to speak, but the material conditions of his life are constrained through financial sanctions. The aim is not to resolve a conflict over truth or falsehood, but to discipline influence.
Seen in this way, the War on Drugs represents the turning point at which law ceased to function primarily as a mechanism for resolving conflict and became a technique for discipline. Sanctions regimes complete the transformation by bypassing law’s conflict-resolving architecture altogether.
