justice

I'm reading Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver, ISBN 0-312-91278-1. Page 66, he writes "the law--and only the law--is what keeps our society from bursting apart at the seams, from becoming a snarling jungle."

Which got me thinking. I brought this up to my fiancée, and while talking, hypothesized that what matters most is the presence of a third party--a judge. I used the example "say I steal a pig from you" (not that she owns any) and she said "and I cut your hand off" (okay, that would probably happen). About to say "well, in some countries, that might be the punishment," I realized that a second thing matters: whether the verdicts and punishments follow some set of rules or not.

So, a least the following continuum exists:

• anarchy - any act at any time
• feuds - revenge, but some sense of cause and effect, of crime and punishment
• intermediary - crime and punishment determined by a hopefully wise, neutral third party
• written law - intermediary decisions, but based on rules written hopefully prior to the crimes they address

Are there any other significant points in the spectrum?