Published rule and the court
Put the rules where everyone can read them, and separate judging from ruling.
Everything for this step
- Field guide
- Institutions: what to found, and how to run them → 32 sections
- Builds
- None yet.
- Reference sheets
- None.
- Track
- Land and law, level 2 of 5 · next: The enforceable promise
Why this matters
Custom is a real legal system and it works — until the group is too large for everyone to know the custom, or until someone powerful has an interest in remembering it differently. Publishing the rule does two things at once. It lets a person know, before acting, what will happen; and it makes a ruler's departure from the rule visible. That second effect is why publication has been resisted so often, and it is the same ratchet the Patterns essay describes for technical knowledge: writing it down stops it being lost, and stops it being quietly changed.
The shape of it
- Write down the rules you already follow before inventing new ones. Codifying existing custom is uncontroversial and produces most of the benefit; legislating novelty at the same time makes the whole exercise contested.
- Post it publicly and copy it. A single held copy is a rule the holder controls. Multiple copies in different hands is what makes the text authoritative rather than the person quoting it.
- State the procedure, not only the offence — who hears a dispute, who may speak, what evidence counts, how an outcome is recorded and how it is appealed. Procedure is what makes an outcome accepted by the side that lost.
- Separate the person who judges from the person who governs. Where they are the same, the rule binds everyone except the one person capable of breaking it at scale.
- Record decisions and keep them. Consistent outcomes in like cases are what turn a rule into a predictable one, and the record is the only way to know whether outcomes are consistent.
- Write down how the rules change. A code with no amendment procedure is either frozen or edited quietly — and quietly is worse.
Doing it, step by step
The summary above says what has to happen. This says how, with the numbers that decide whether it works.
1 · Codify the custom you already follow
Write down the rules the group already follows before inventing new ones. Codifying existing custom is uncontroversial and produces most of the benefit; legislating novelty at the same time makes the whole exercise contested.
Ask several different people — including the least powerful — what the rule is on each matter, write down every version, read the draft aloud to the whole group, correct it, and adopt it by the two-thirds rule from deciding how you decide.
2 · Publish it plainly and in many hands
A single held copy is a rule the holder controls. Post the text on a durable public board where people pass, and keep at least three copies in different hands and different buildings.
Write it in the plain language people speak, so that a twelve-year-old reader can follow it. Rules written in a register most people cannot read are publication in form and secrecy in effect. Read it aloud to the whole group once a year.
3 · Write the procedure, step by step
Procedure is what makes an outcome accepted by the side that lost. Write down:
- How a complaint is made — who, against whom, which rule, what happened.
- Notice to the other party, with a stated minimum time to prepare.
- A public hearing: both parties speak, both may call witnesses, both may answer.
- What evidence counts, in order of weight — the written record, then witnesses, then assertion.
- A decision in writing with its reasons.
- Appeal, within a stated time, to a different person or body.
4 · Separate the judge from the governor
Where the same person judges and governs, the rule binds everyone except the one person capable of breaking it at scale.
- Choose adjudicators differently from governors — for example, drawn by lot from a panel of respected people, or elected for a fixed term.
- No one holds both roles at once.
- An adjudicator with an interest steps aside — kin, a debt, a property dispute, a business tie — and the rule says so.
- Adjudicators cannot be removed for their decisions, only for stated misconduct by a stated procedure.
5 · Record every decision and cite the earlier ones
Consistent outcomes in like cases are what turn a rule into a predictable one, and the record is the only way to know whether outcomes are consistent.
Keep a numbered register of cases: parties, rule, facts found, decision, reasons, sanction, appeal. Adjudicators read the earlier decisions on similar facts before deciding, and state in writing why a decision follows or departs from them.
6 · No penalty without a published rule, and sanctions in proportion
Nobody is punished for an act that no published rule forbade when they did it. A rule applied backwards is not a rule; it is a decision about a person.
Set graduated, proportionate sanctions in the code itself: restitution first, then a fine or labour, then loss of a privilege, with exclusion reserved for the gravest and repeated cases. Stating the range in advance is what lets a person know, before acting, what will happen.
7 · Write down how the rules change
A code with no amendment procedure is either frozen or edited quietly — and quietly is worse.
- A proposed change is published in full at least a month before the vote.
- Adoption needs two-thirds under the decision rule.
- The new text replaces the old on the public board and in every copy, dated.
- The old version is kept, marked superseded, with its dates in force.