Negative criminal rules unify society faster than positive civil codes do.

Evidence

In Germany, the positive life relations underlying civil law were unified in the Civil Code only some thirty years after the Reich was founded, whereas the Criminal Code, with its negative rules, has been uniformly in force ever since 1872. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 9488

Categorization

• SHARE: One concrete historical confirmation of Simmel’s abstract point — the German Criminal Code preceded the Civil Code by thirty years.