As societies make progress through Smith’s four stages, they become more complex, and as a result more formal institutions arise.1 These institutions develop to assist people in cooperating with one another in their efforts to extend the market and to promote human well-being. Smith identified these institutions as the pillars that hold up society. Among these pillars, Adam Smith identified justice as the main pillar. In so doing he tells us that “justice … is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice” of society, and if this pillar is removed, the edifice will “in a moment crumble into atoms.”2