John, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I think you are dead on, "simply examining two sports through the legal-thought lens doesn't seem to do very much." I am intrigued by "this might lead to an interesting argument about whether a large scale judicial system is actually necessary to a functioning society," but as much as I am an ultimate evangelist, it it hard to analogize the ultimate community to society broadly.

Maybe there is something here on how to design contracts to encourage people to work together. I will give that shot after finals and hope it leads to something interesting.

-- AlexAsen - 29 Apr 2010