consuetude
/ˈkɒnswɪtjuːd
/noun chiefly Scottish
A custom, especially one having legal force.The Moderns were frequently critical of Progress, not because they favoured old verities and consuetudes, but because Progress attempted to pass itself off as Nature, or as History itself....
- Obviously, consuetude and orality still retained their primary role: a huge number of institutional, personal, and juridical relationships were never sanctioned in written form.
- We conclude by discussing the implications of consuetude for political and social behavior.
Derivatives
consuetudinary
/ adjective ...- The consuetudinary law and traditional memory of the Lombards, which had been preserved for centuries through the means typical of oral cultures, needed a new and stronger foundation: they became texts written in Latin.
- But modernity is fuelled by secularization: in our times, political authority must be not merely the enforcer of natural or consuetudinary law, but rather the producer of law.
- In 1452, Bizkaians assembled beneath their sacred Oak of Gernika and approved the Fuero Viejo de Bizkaia, the Old Law of Bizkaia: a redaction of the consuetudinary laws and customs that had informed their legal practices for centuries.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin consuetudo (see custom).