“A legal system is a coercive order of public rules addressed to rational persons for the purpose of regulating their conduct and providing the framework for their social cooperation” (TJ 207).Of course, in any society there may be a number of systems of public rules regulating conduct and framing various cooperative undertakings. A legal system is distinct from these in several respects. A legal system is comprehensive in a way that other systems of public rules, typically subordinated to a legal system, are not. The legal system defines the basic institutional structure within which the activities governed by other systems of public rules take place (TJ 207). In the paradigm case a legal system has a territorially bounded core, namely a state, in a way that other systems of public rules need not. Of course, jurisdiction may extend in particular cases beyond this territorially bounded core, as when a state asserts its legal jurisdiction over some extraterritorial activity of its nationals. And there may be legal systems, e.g. international law, without a territorially bounded core in the form of a state (though in fact much and arguably the core of international law is bounded by the territories of the several states the voluntary undertakings of which give rise to it). Further, the authority of a legal system is typically final within the territorial boundaries of its jurisdiction. The authority of other systems of public rules is constrained by law. Finally, while many systems of public rules may be coercively enforced to some degree or other, they may be so only at the discretion of the legal system to which they are subordinate, and it will in turn typically claim or reserve exclusively for itself the most serious forms of coercion. Its claim to the exclusive use of these forms of coercion reflects the fact that among the interests it serves are some of the most fundamental of human interests, which is not necessarily true for other systems of public rules.