In a new working paper, Ted Sichelman, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, asks a bold question: what if the laws that govern physical reality themselves have orders—first order, second order, and beyond—just like social rules do? His central idea is not that the cosmos is lawless, but that physical law might be organized into orders, with first-order rules that govern everyday evolution and second-order powers that change those rules. The implication is big: quantum measurement, one of physics’ oldest puzzles, could be better understood if we treat it as a second-order physical process that selects among competing microlaws for a system.
The paper, The Order of Physical Law, builds on a bridge between social law and physics. It borrows a vocabulary from jurists—first-order duties, second-order powers, and even higher orders—to describe how physical theories might index not just what happens, but how the underlying rules themselves can shift. Instead of asking whether quantum systems collapse, Sichelman asks what kind of process could cause a rule to flip, and why such a flip would yield a definite classical outcome. The study is anchored in the University of San Diego and clearly written by its lead author, Ted Sichelman, who holds a J.D. from Harvard and a physics background, a rare combination that lets him speak across disciplines.
Sectional note: The paper’s core bet is that law-like structure can live in layers, and physics might share that layered architecture. If you imagine physical laws as a playground where rules can be amended, then second-order moves become the mechanisms that rewrite the playground’s rulebook in real time. Sichelman’s aim is to offer a language, and perhaps a path toward equations, that help physicists and philosophers talk about how a universe governed by rules can also shift those rules themselves.
