Codifying unwritten customary law for a colonial state transformed it into rigid written law

Evidence

But the Dutch codification of adat changed their nature forever, and gave them different and unprecedented structure and meaning. A crucial effect of codification was an elision into rigidity. Yet, it is not difficult to understand why the Dutch insisted on capturing adat in written form. Coming from the continental legal tradition, they could not conceive of any unwritten law as law properly speaking, as a code of conduct interpreted and practiced by the individual and the autonomous, self-ruling local community; hence, for adat to have any force, suitable to a coercive state, it had to be endorsed by a written jurisprudential form. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 255

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom law-merchant material on how institutions formalize informal reputation systems, and to the reader’s interest in how written codification transforms customary practice. — connects to: Hawaiian customary land practice can override private paper title in court — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 829; Colonies codified law because the uncodified common law was not packaged for export — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 488
• ADDENDUM: Parallels how codifying informal trade norms (as in the law-merchant and diamond bourse materials) also froze fluid practice; both show formal written law reshaping what preceded it.