Customary Law

Customary law is a legal system based on the long-established customs and traditions of a community, typically unwritten and passed down through oral tradition, and applied by community, tribal or traditional authorities. It remains formally recognized, often alongside an inherited colonial-era common or civil law system, across much of sub-Saharan Africa, in Pacific Island states, and within Indigenous legal systems recognized to varying degrees in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Because customary law is generally unwritten and specific to each community, it resists the kind of single-origin dating the other legal system families in this atlas carry, and no single origin year is recorded for it here.