Any private decision can be converted into a group appeal.

Evidence

First, virtually any decision of this kind which can be mentioned may be made the basis of an appeal to the group, either by the individual himself or by someone else. If you work for your neighbor and do not get paid, you may want to complain about the nonpayment or he about the way the work was done. ‘ven in matters which seem most plainly private, others may assert an interest. Singing in the shower too loud, or too far off key, or at the wrong hour, may seem to your neighbors to be a nuisance; and they may want to have the racket stopped. Prayers may start a civil war if they are thought to be addressed to the wrong deity. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 945

Categorization

• SEED: The escalation from personal dispute to group adjudication is a clean through-line for an essay on why no decision is truly private under law.
• XREF: Connects to the law-as-institution theme — private ordering versus public adjudication — which also runs through the course’s treatment of how conflicts become legal. — connects to: Even the most private decisions presuppose and are shaped by prior institutional arrangements. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 949; Private and official decisions mutually constitute each other in a non-linear loop. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 953
• CANDY: ‘Prayers may start a civil war if they are thought to be addressed to the wrong deity’ is a memorable, tweetable one-liner asserting the public stakes of seemingly private acts.