The means of justifying the new imperial science are inseparable from the means of its extension; the “rule of law,”– or as it is also known, the “supremacy of law,” – accomplishes both. Law is, Alan Hunt maintains, a “primary agency of the advance of new modalities of power and constitutes distinctive features of their mode of operation.” The imposition of the “rule of law” by a dominant nation-state upon other peoples was a classic means of extending empire, part of the process of colonization. This was, and remains, especially true of property law. Indeed, the politics of property has long been the central historical dynamic mediating the relationships between indigenous peoples and imperial states. Whereas sovereignty over indigenous lands was typically justified by appeal to three international legal theories of territorial acquisition – occupation, conquest, and cession – acquisition of less tangible indigenous resources – cultural, intellectual, and genetic – is now widely legitimated by appeal to intellectual property laws.

Intellectual property policies are justified in the U.S. Constitution on utilitarian grounds as a means “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Yet the lack of evidential support for the claim that patents and copyrights indeed effectively promote these ends has been noted.