In the form of law, political power can, as it were, be conserved and kept available for those who themselves neither act politically nor have power of their own available. Thus, a legal contract must above all be conceived of as an instrument for putting unprogrammed political power into the service of non-political (private) purposes. The fatal distinction between private and public law has obscured this connection between all law and politics, although private law in particular was originally ius civilis, in other words, political law.

DEFINE: Clarifies that legal contracts are instruments converting political power for private purposes, and that the private/public law split obscures their shared political origin.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 773