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Kritarchy is a political system based on the equal justice for all and the concept of natural rights.^{[citation needed]} It differs from other political systems by its application of the rules of justice. Under kritarchy even courts of law, police forces and other organisations that look after the day-to-day business of maintaining law, are denied any power, privilege or immunity that is not in conformity with natural law. Every person is entitled to offer judicial or police-services to willing others; no person can be forced to become a client of any court of law or police force against his will. In short, under kritarchy judicial and police-services are offered on a free market, which is considered to be the natural law of the human world in so far as exchanges of goods and services are concerned.^{[citation needed]} Kritarchy is essentially the natural rights form of anarcho-capitalism seen from a legal perspective. In modern vernacular, the term "anarcho-capitalism" has superseded the term "kritarchy."

The term ‘kritarchy’, compounded from the Greek words ‘kritès’ (judge) or ‘krito’ (to judge) and ‘archè’ (principle, cause), appears to be coined in 1844 by the English author Robert Southy.^{[citation needed]} In its construction it resembles more familiar political terms such as monarchy, oligarchy and hierarchy. ‘Kritarchy’ is mentioned in among others Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, The Oxford English Dictionary and the American Collegiate Dictionary. According to its etymological roots, a kritarchy is a political system in which justice (more exactly the judgment that seeks to determine justice) is the ruling principle or first cause. Similarly a monarchy is a system in which one person is supposed to be the ruling principle or first cause of every legal action, every other person being no more than an obedient subject of the monarch, and under an oligarchy a few persons (the oligarchs), acting in concert but without a fixed hierarchy among them, are thought to be the source of all legal actions.

Opposite form of political system to Kritarchy is Krytocracy.

• http://www.somalilandforum.com/articles/whither_somaliland.htm
• http://users.ugent.be/~frvandun/Texts/Articles/Kritarch1.htm