The article claims that, having grown in necessary connection, state law and evasion of state law must be studied together. Some of the articles in this volume, by rejecting officialism in favor of analytical complexity, give an angle of approach to states and state-level societies that is more productive than taking governments just at their face value. The articles generally take a descriptive and analytical approach rather than advocating public positions, although in some cases the public arguments are clear. A number of articles imply that laws lacking effective legitimacy and demanding force without societal support simply increase illegality, with all the negative effects that come after it, including internal violence, predation, covert worlds, and rogue finance. The article concludes that both financial fraud and physical violence should be prohibited, prosecuted, and punished. The mere fact that illegality persists and often interweaves with the legal, formal world does not justify a purely relativist stance. However, not everything the formal state does is morally efficacious. Transcending the assumptions that all formal law is good and all illegality is a "problem" to be eliminated, sorting out the particular balance in each case, can help inform public moral choices. References