Social activities governed by microlaw: identification and analysis

¶ … government needs to stay out of the issues of microlaw. Political revolutions such as those in Russia have invaded upon this territory, resulting in horrible human suffering and tragedy.

The best example of social activities or behaviors that are governed by microlaw would be capitalist style trading itself. For instance, is there any formal law that sets values? Logically, one who has been raised in a free market economy knows this instinctively. As Reisman points out in his classical 1999 book on the subject, diamonds are assigned more value than coal (Reisman, 1999, p. 174). The market and human perceptions do this and gradually form systems of civilization to facilitate those perceptions in a moral system. The system of jurisprudence that set this market up is as old as humanity and has no formal structure or basis in the modern sense. Rather it is a structure akin to British common law or more appropriately to economic dealings formalized in the Jewish world as "minhag" or customary law that had force in Jewish communities but for centuries has had no formal existence. This was due to the functioning of Jews in their exile as a minority community in the various lands in which they resided. While classical Jewish texts such as the Talmud are supreme, local Jewish custom is not disregarded and is highly respected in all areas from liturgy to common life events of human life (Hidary, 2010).

The results of disregarding customary and common law can be seen graphically in history in the abject failure of political revolutions when they allow official state law to monopolize the definitions of what law actually is. This is done usually at the cost of great suffering to the common people such as can be seen in the Russian Revolution. The starvation, famine and resulting human suffering was off the scale and justified by theoreticians such as Vladimir Lenin as necessary fight enemies (meaning the common people as well as political rivals). To describe them, he used terms such as "harmful insects," "lice," "vermin" and "germs." Lenin felt that it was necessary to relentlessly "purify," "clean" and "purge" Russia of the "flees," "bugs" and "parasites. " Only by purging it completely would Russia be pure enough for the clean sheet of the revolution (Werth, 2008). The history of communism and fascism is replete with such nauseating disrespect for the common customs and mores of people that gird the very structures of society. We do not always see these microlaws, but they are there and have validity and society only invades upon them with great danger.