One of the characteristics that defines a culture is its laws, both written and unwritten. How is law made, by one royal autocrat, by a council, by every petty noble in their own fief, by theocrats citing the gods, by elected representatives who do or don’t respond to the people they represent?
How is it enforced, by armed force, by spies and secret abductions, by trained police, by councils of citizens, by telepaths examining motives…? How do the courts operate? In fleshing out his multiverse, Robert Heinlein created one society that “balanced” crimes: whatever harm one had caused was done exactly equally to the perpetrator. His characters were very shaken by this.
Who is bound by it and who gets away with everything? Is everyone treated equally (well or ill)? Is stratification enforced rigorously, or does it happen unintentionally, or not at all? What happens when a significant subculture disagrees with the law as written, and takes matters into their own hands? The results can be anything from the Underground Railroad to lynchings. And that segment sees those acts as just, and the law as unjust.
What looks manifestly unjust to an outsider may be considered laudable by those inside the culture (or at least, the subset that holds power.) Slavery was common to almost all societies at one time. Jim Crow laws and the caste system of India, redlining and discrimination of all forms, making women into servants and breeding stock, or the Chicago school of economics, all are forms of force and oppression by law and practice.
What does a society do about those who are acting legally but breaking the unwritten norms? Customs and prejudices can be far more rigid than actual laws, and tend to be enforced by the neighbors, not the authorities. But they can be truly deadly to flout.
Some societies may have no written legal code at all. But everyone in them knows what is fair, and what is cheating. And the commonest form of punishment for cheating, in human real-world examples of such societies, is shunning. If you can’t be a good part of the society, you won’t be a part of it at all.
If you write historical fiction or non-fiction, your societies are largely there for the researching. (beware of assuming you know how things were without research). But if you are making up your own world, anything goes, as long as each tribe/nation/planet is internally consistent.
Challenge: let your characters confront the law written or unwritten, in some way, and show how they manage the consequences. Try to remain under 300 words.
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