Adat law’s orality required communal participation in its interpretation

Evidence

“Adat law” had always existed in an oral form, and despite the fact that certain elements of it were written down, orality remained its defining characteristic, for orality had a function: It required communal participation in the construal and application of this “law,” what might be termed local knowledge. It additionally constituted a state of affairs, a practice, a state of mind, a moral code, and a way of seeing the world, but it can scarcely be reduced to our modern notions of law, operating in whole or in part as a legal organ of a coercive state. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 253

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the reader’s work on non-state legal systems like the diamond trade’s extralegal arbitration; adat offers a similar communal, non-coercive normative order.
• SHARE: Send to a legal anthropologist or comparative-law contact — the contrast of oral communal law vs. coercive state law as incommensurable categories is their terrain.