12 ms·

Xeer

246 points by mazsa 12y ago

dr_faustus 12y ago
And everybody knows: Somalia is paradise! You can even become a pirate! Arrrrrr!
noiv 12y ago
Very interesting. Wasn't aware of alternatives to the western legal system hundreds of years old and actually widely accepted.
- contulluipeste 12y ago
  As I see it, the western legal system which relies on written analytical laws appears indeed as an "alternative", but western judges do for example make use of judicial precedents too. This system is based on a set of principles that have just a lesser use in western legal system.
- LyndsySimon 12y ago
  You might also be interested in Lex Mercatoria. It's a system of common law used between merchants in medievil Europe for dispute resolution, particularly in a time when the largest truly effective government was at the level of the nation-state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria I really wish I had more time and energy to devote to the study of polycentric law. It's something I feel very strongly about, and where I know enough to realize my understanding is incomplete :)
- praxeologist 12y ago
  Xeer is one example of the success of private, customary and polycentric law. The Lex Mercatoria as the other poster noted is one more example. See also Zomia: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscovered-country/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscov... Medieval Iceland: http://mises.org/daily/1121 http://mises.org/daily/1121 and Ireland (page 3): https://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf https://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf People are waxing about the superiority of "British common law" while its roots are a system of the Anglo-Saxons extremely similar to the Xeer.
cup 12y ago
I must admit I was confused to see xeer being posted to HN. Its interesting to contemplate the unique history of Somalia and the Somali people and how it fits into the greater African jigsaw puzzle. I think the article is slightly misinformed however, the Sharia legal and judicial instrument which was adopted by the Somali people after the growth of the Muslim faith in the region was another system of justice and social order that arrived well before attempted European colonisation. On a tangent, interesting things are happening with the Somali federal government now with respect to the telecommunications industry. Not only does Somalia now have its own top down domain (.so) but fiber optic lines are slowly being rolled out in the capital. I find it ironic to think that in Australia the government is singing praises for copper network lines (after repealing the NBN) yet war torn anarchic Somali is pushing in the other direction. Somalia and Africas future really does look interesting.
- mtkd 12y ago
  I find articles like this quite useful for developing my thoughts on algorithms I use - my first reaction when reading was 'could this be applicable to machine learning?'.
  - aet 12y ago
    and, is it?
    - prawks 12y ago
      My thought is that it may be applicable if you're looking to find points of convergence, which classification of data by multiple classifiers may seek to do. Would be a fun experiment. Do different classifiers who have been taught with different data sets tend to classify data points similarly? I'm unsure of an exciting real-world problem you could use where this would be beneficial over teaching one classifier with all of the data, but I'm also not super familiar with the math behind many of the classification algorithms out there.
      - aet 12y ago
vacri 12y ago
Several scholars have noted that even though Xeer may be centuries old, it has the potential to serve as the legal system of a modern, well-functioning economy. This makes no sense, given the remainder of the article, as a modern, well-functioning economy (of which Somalia certainly does not have one) requires diversity. Xeer relies heavily on ingrained cultural norms, and is discriminatory against minorities and women. Lack of impartiality is also a question, given that you are assigned a judge at birth. It might work well in Somalia, but I can't see what is described as being translatable elsewhere. There are some elements that aren't Xeer-specific (like reducing focus on punitive measures), but as a whole, I can't see it working somewhere else that doesn't have the same social structure.
- peteretep 12y ago
  Well, additionally it takes them a relatively long time in the article to make the connection to common law, which is also "discovered".
- gbog 12y ago
  I agree that the article makes no sense, but I think that modern society "requires diversity" might be some kind of party line in the West and might be no fully true. An example of successful society that is not highly "diverse" is China. (Well China certainly is and was diverse, but not as much as current Western societies).
  - Agathos 12y ago
    And before China you had Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
    - w1ntermute 12y ago
      Singapore is a very diverse country, whether it be ethnically, linguistically, or culturally.
  - vacri 12y ago
    'Economy', not 'society'. China has quite a diverse economy.
disputin 12y ago
"Court procedure..... In a murder case, the offender flees to a safe place – including outside the country – to avoid prosecution or execution "Qisaas." "
616c 12y ago
I also find the name somewhat ironic. Xeer clearly comes from خير, or khayr, which is Arabic for good. It is good, but in the higher moralistic and religious sense in addition to the normal sense. So I wonder if it goes back to original interaction with the Arabs, 7th century as noted or prior. The general idea, consensus-based law as I see it, seems similar on the basic principle in Islam to Ijma'[0], or consensus-based formation of jurisprudence. There are varying views, but that idea is that Islamic law (despite outside views of it) is not controlled by one but must be agreed upon by popular approval of jurisprudence scholars (of course this is loosely defined, but what can you do). Xeer is definitely from the Arabic, as are many loanwords from Somali (as an Arabic speaker, who sat in linguistics courses where Somali speakers presented, I could be wrong). So I am not sure where the "no foreign loanwords" comment in the Wikipedia article came from. Then again, maybe I am just reading to much into this name/book cover. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijma
- dfc 12y ago
  You "also find the name ironic?" Who else found the name ironic? And what is the irony? I have reread your comment three times now and can not identify any irony.
  - 616c 12y ago
    I get into it later in my comment: it must be an original concept because no loan words are used in the Somali legal terminology, I point out that might not be true.
    - dfc 12y ago
      "it must be an original concept because no loan words are used in the Somali legal terminology, I point out that might not be true" != irony
      - 616c 12y ago
        So I guess we need a jurist to rule ...
gbog 12y ago
There is this angle that says that natural laws are good, better than "artificial" laws. It seems trendy nowadays and is emphasised in the article. But another angle, that seem to describe more closely the long term evolution and progress of human societies, is that laws and ethics have been slowly built by human societies against the law of nature. The direst way to express this is that in a natural environment, the weak and the disabled are left aside and die quickly, which we humans have decided to try hard to avoid. So maybe a softer, more informal, "stateless" society like this Xeer could be valuable. But if it was, it would be because it would better protect us from the law of nature.
- contulluipeste 12y ago
  Aside from the law of nature, I remarked the use of precedents as a co-basis for juridical mediation. Although this is something used all over the world outside Somalia (on a secondary role and usually only in an informal manner), its interesting to know it to work somewhere in real-life as a primary law principle.
- logicchains 12y ago
  >in a natural environment, the weak and the disabled are left aside and die quickly This simply isn't true[1]. Humans evolved feelings like compassion because such cooperation and caring was beneficial to our survival. These emotions exist outside of any deliberate human decision making or social planning. Even monkeys have evolved forms of altruistic behaviour[2]. 'Ethics' in the sense of empathy and compassionate behaviour is hence just as much a part of the 'law of nature' as the more violent behaviours associated with it. 1.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864937/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864937/ 2. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/6-amazing-ways-animals-show-compassion http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/6-amazing-way...
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    > Humans evolved feelings like compassion because such cooperation and caring was beneficial to our survival. That's a plausible hypothesis, but considering that it cannot be proven or disproven, it is an ultimately uninteresting one. gbog was talking about social evolution, which is a topic of social sciences. On second thought, perhaps reclassifying evolutionary psychology as a social science would be in order.
neotrinity 12y ago
How is it different from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_self-government_in_India#Early_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_self-government_in_India#... ?? which has been practised from way before 7th century ? [ The Tone of the question is curiosity and not a flame-bait please]
- BugBrother 12y ago
  I was wondering about similarities to the old "ting" in Scandinavia, which regulated clan feuds, etc. Afaik, some kind of laws are common in clan societies. E.g. blood price, mentioned in the wikipedia article, was common in historical clan societies. (Famously, in Sweden if you killed someone from "Småland" in "Götaland", it was free. :-) ) How different is Xeer?
  - LyndsySimon 12y ago
    > I was wondering about similarities to the old "ting" in Scandinavia, which regulated clan feuds, etc. Is this related to the "farthings" of the Icelandic Commonwealth? Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Court_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Court_sy...
    - BugBrother 12y ago
      See the "Althing" in that article. It varied over time, later the laws got written down. And, as the article noted, on Iceland people always were too busy surviving to do as much of the usual clan violence. There are quite a few place names in Sweden with "ting" in them, e.g. "Tingvalla". (I assume it is similar in the other Scandinavian countries.)
antirez 12y ago
That may seem strange, but in Europe there are places where a similar "juridical" system was used too, which is, in Sicily. It was common for Mafia bosses and other respected older people to act as third party in order to judge disputes between people.
- genieyclo 12y ago
  There are lots of parallels between the mafia system and Somali clan society. You pay your regular dues (in Somali, "qaaraan") that could be spent on anything from helping a destitute clansman get healthcare or a funeral, or help fund a clan militia's war. In return, you're under the protection of the clan on a blood-for-blood basis, guaranteed support and safety when the need arises. Just like the mafia system has it's downsides, so does the Somali system as evidenced by going on several decades of bloodshed now.
  - wmt 12y ago
    That seems to parallel some other systems too where you pay the rulers a tax which gets used to fund stuff like healthcare or wars.
    - praxeologist 12y ago
      "That" is a totally imagined mischaracterization of how Xeer law works. See here for how it actually works: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_12/Book_Draft/Systems/SomaliLawChapter.html http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_sy...
  - praxeologist 12y ago
    >Just like the mafia system has it's downsides, so does the Somali system as evidenced by going on several decades of bloodshed now. This is an incredibly ignorant statement. The source of bloodshed in Somalia is foreign governments via the UN/AMISOM and their largely Kenyan/Ethiopian troops trying to prop up a government in Mogadishu, as well as the foreign-funded al-Shabaab they fight. This is not some noble jihad for democracy, just various factions struggling for the benefits a monopoly backed by strong foreign powers will bring. The political climate and level of violence in south and southwest Somalia is vastly different than the rest of the region. Beyond Galkayo, there is pretty much no war. In Puntland and Somaliland, Xeer and customary law trumps the weak governments of the autonomous regions. You falsely equate Xeer to the mafia and where the Xeer legal order reigns there is peace in Somalia. A mafia system is identical to a state except a state has public acceptance of the hegemony. The Somali people want Xeer and not state rule. Even during the Barre regime they would not recognize decisions of state courts and would handle the bulk of disputes their own way and ignore state rulings. The decades of bloodshed come from a minority group of western-educated democracy lovers and psychopath "warlords" who have been waging war on the Mogadishu area for the prize of UN recognition and the trough of foreign aid money it brings.
blueskin_ 12y ago
>stateless society Sounds to me like a nicer way of saying failed state, which is what Somalia is.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  It's not a failed state since they never tried to build a "state" by the western definition of the word.
- iand 12y ago
  Why say failed state? Do you presume that all countries must have a state?
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    The alternative is anarchy. Communists like to say that anarchy would be happy rainbows and sharing, but the closest nations we have to it are mostly in Africa, and more resemble feudal warlords than a utopian society.
johnzim 12y ago
From a jurisprudential point of view it's interesting to see how it evolved - the law in England moved out of the church and Xeer appears to have been born out of the reigning power in Somalia (elders) and remained therein. I'll take the English common law and equity any day of the week - flexible where it needs to be so it's capable of applying concepts of natural justice constrained by well established principle, while still providing vital certainty as to the law. This passage in the wikipedia article makes the legal scholar in me shiver: "The lack of a central governing authority means that there is a slight variation in the interpretation of Xeer amongst different communities" Dealing with conflict of laws without prejudicing parties in an international setting is hard enough: imagine having to pursue justice according to discrepancies between individual communities! Better have some cast-iron choice-of-law clauses in those trade agreements!
- ianbicking 12y ago
  There is an attempt to find a proper jurisdiction: "A case is always heard at the lowest level of the clan that is possible. This ranges from the qoys (nuclear family), up through the reer (closest relatives), jilib (first diya group), and laaf (sub-clan) to the qolo (clan)."
tokenadult 12y ago
"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881) page 1. In other words, the Anglo-American system of common law is a system that has developed by generalizing from particular cases as they come up, and not by thinking from the top down about what kind of rules would be ideal. It's rich with deeper meaning that there are a number of comments here about the development of rules and laws as we comment on an article posted on Wikipedia. I am one of thousands of volunteer editors on Wikipedia (since May 2010) years after having been (1) an editor of a glossy monthly bilingual publication about a foreign country as an expatriate resident of that country, (2) an editor of a series of English-language trade magazines about manufactured products from that same country, and (3) a student-editor (usually the only kind of editor such a publication has) of a law review. I started editing Wikipedia as late as I did, years after Wikipedia was founded, because when I first heard about Wikipedia I thought its editorial policies are madness--and, sure enough, the articles that resulted from the original policy included a lot of cruft. As Wikipedia has continued in existence, it has not been able to continue an Ayn Rand anarchy of bullies but has gradually had to develop rules and procedures and (a little bit of) hierarchy and organization. Most of the articles on the topics I do the most of my professional research in are still LOUSY, and I have been interviewed twice by the Wikipedia Signpost in the last several months about what needs to be done to improve articles on Wikipedia for various WikiProjects. The article kindly submitted here illustrates the problem, with its incoherent presentation of facts and speculation from a mixture of good and poor sources. I live among the largest Somali expatriate community in the world outside Somalia (Minneapolis and its suburbs--we can listen to Somali-language local radio here since the 1990s) and have a new client for my supplementary mathematics classes whose family is from Somalia. That country's internal conditions during my adult life have been HARSH, and I don't envy any Somali patriot's task in trying to build up a country with peace, stability, and justice for all Somali citizens. I do wish all Somalis well in adapted customary legal systems to the modern world.
- javert 12y ago
  > Ayn Rand anarchy of bullies Ayn Rand has absolutely nothing to do with this, and you shouldn't use her name as a form of generic insult. That is just stupid. Also, Ayn Rand wrote at length against anarchy, so your insult doesn't even make sense. She also wrote at length against the arbitrary use of force, which is what bullies use.
nighthawk24 12y ago
Gram Panchayat in Indian villages often meet under trees too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat
fiatjaf 12y ago
For people interested in common law and the problems of the State law system, I recommend the articles on the topic by John Hasnas: THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW: http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm HAYEK, THE COMMON LAW, AND FLUID DRIVE: http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/NYUFinal.pdf http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/NYUFinal.pdf
- praxeologist 12y ago
  Hasnas is good. Also consider Benson's Customary Law with Private Means of Resolving Disputes and Dispensing Justice: A Description of a Modern System of Law and Order without State Coercion: http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf
  - fiatjaf 12y ago
    Do you ever think about building a framework for injecting an anarchistic customary law into our statist society using cryptography and the Internet? Something like the bitcoin of law? I'm talking about something that could be applied to the real world today, not to a group of crypto-anarchy enthusiasts. I'm also not talking about smart contracts, as these need a legal structure to work and cannot build it themselves. I'm seeking people interested in this subject to exchange ideas.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      Well, let's start with a reasonably understood system: HN karma. Behaviors that follow guidelines are upvoted; behaviors that violate them are downvoted. Guidelines are implicitly created (customary law) by edge-case upvotes and downvotes. What does it not address that your system would need to? (This is not a rhetorical question; it would help me understand what you're trying to achieve.)
      - fiatjaf 12y ago
        You've got the point. I imagine that HN karma is a system very close to the ideal. At first, it would only one things: an interface to the real world. I mean, people breaching contracts and people fulfilling them in the real world should be thrown into this system, and the real world people (which should not need to make a special type of digital contract or something, because they already have their own contracts that should be valid) must be able to use this database of ratings to make decisions.
mcguire 12y ago
"People who have migrated to locations far removed from their homes can also find themselves without adequate representation at Xeer proceedings." That kinda sounds like a problem.
- notahacker 12y ago
  It's OK, there should be some relatives around to make a restorative payment of camels or wives. Unless they're from a particularly powerful clan, in which case they may be able to avoid paying the Diya even if they can't swing the outcome of the case. Personally I find it quite odd that so many self-proclaimed libertarians are so favourably disposed towards what is essentially a system for punishing the collective for the actions of the individual.
anubiann00b 12y ago
This won't work for large societies (unfortunately).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

246 points by mazsa 12y ago

And everybody knows: Somalia is paradise! You can even become a pirate! Arrrrrr!

noiv 12y ago

Very interesting. Wasn't aware of alternatives to the western legal system hundreds of years old and actually widely accepted.

contulluipeste 12y ago
As I see it, the western legal system which relies on written analytical laws appears indeed as an "alternative", but western judges do for example make use of judicial precedents too. This system is based on a set of principles that have just a lesser use in western legal system.
LyndsySimon 12y ago
You might also be interested in Lex Mercatoria. It's a system of common law used between merchants in medievil Europe for dispute resolution, particularly in a time when the largest truly effective government was at the level of the nation-state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria I really wish I had more time and energy to devote to the study of polycentric law. It's something I feel very strongly about, and where I know enough to realize my understanding is incomplete :)
praxeologist 12y ago
Xeer is one example of the success of private, customary and polycentric law. The Lex Mercatoria as the other poster noted is one more example. See also Zomia: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscovered-country/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscov... Medieval Iceland: http://mises.org/daily/1121 http://mises.org/daily/1121 and Ireland (page 3): https://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf https://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf People are waxing about the superiority of "British common law" while its roots are a system of the Anglo-Saxons extremely similar to the Xeer.

cup 12y ago

I must admit I was confused to see xeer being posted to HN. Its interesting to contemplate the unique history of Somalia and the Somali people and how it fits into the greater African jigsaw puzzle. I think the article is slightly misinformed however, the Sharia legal and judicial instrument which was adopted by the Somali people after the growth of the Muslim faith in the region was another system of justice and social order that arrived well before attempted European colonisation. On a tangent, interesting things are happening with the Somali federal government now with respect to the telecommunications industry. Not only does Somalia now have its own top down domain (.so) but fiber optic lines are slowly being rolled out in the capital. I find it ironic to think that in Australia the government is singing praises for copper network lines (after repealing the NBN) yet war torn anarchic Somali is pushing in the other direction. Somalia and Africas future really does look interesting.

mtkd 12y ago
I find articles like this quite useful for developing my thoughts on algorithms I use - my first reaction when reading was 'could this be applicable to machine learning?'.
- aet 12y ago
  and, is it?
  - prawks 12y ago
    My thought is that it may be applicable if you're looking to find points of convergence, which classification of data by multiple classifiers may seek to do. Would be a fun experiment. Do different classifiers who have been taught with different data sets tend to classify data points similarly? I'm unsure of an exciting real-world problem you could use where this would be beneficial over teaching one classifier with all of the data, but I'm also not super familiar with the math behind many of the classification algorithms out there.
    - aet 12y ago

vacri 12y ago

Several scholars have noted that even though Xeer may be centuries old, it has the potential to serve as the legal system of a modern, well-functioning economy. This makes no sense, given the remainder of the article, as a modern, well-functioning economy (of which Somalia certainly does not have one) requires diversity. Xeer relies heavily on ingrained cultural norms, and is discriminatory against minorities and women. Lack of impartiality is also a question, given that you are assigned a judge at birth. It might work well in Somalia, but I can't see what is described as being translatable elsewhere. There are some elements that aren't Xeer-specific (like reducing focus on punitive measures), but as a whole, I can't see it working somewhere else that doesn't have the same social structure.

peteretep 12y ago
Well, additionally it takes them a relatively long time in the article to make the connection to common law, which is also "discovered".
gbog 12y ago
I agree that the article makes no sense, but I think that modern society "requires diversity" might be some kind of party line in the West and might be no fully true. An example of successful society that is not highly "diverse" is China. (Well China certainly is and was diverse, but not as much as current Western societies).
- Agathos 12y ago
  And before China you had Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
  - w1ntermute 12y ago
    Singapore is a very diverse country, whether it be ethnically, linguistically, or culturally.
- vacri 12y ago
  'Economy', not 'society'. China has quite a diverse economy.

disputin 12y ago

"Court procedure..... In a murder case, the offender flees to a safe place – including outside the country – to avoid prosecution or execution "Qisaas." "

616c 12y ago

I also find the name somewhat ironic. Xeer clearly comes from خير, or khayr, which is Arabic for good. It is good, but in the higher moralistic and religious sense in addition to the normal sense. So I wonder if it goes back to original interaction with the Arabs, 7th century as noted or prior. The general idea, consensus-based law as I see it, seems similar on the basic principle in Islam to Ijma'[0], or consensus-based formation of jurisprudence. There are varying views, but that idea is that Islamic law (despite outside views of it) is not controlled by one but must be agreed upon by popular approval of jurisprudence scholars (of course this is loosely defined, but what can you do). Xeer is definitely from the Arabic, as are many loanwords from Somali (as an Arabic speaker, who sat in linguistics courses where Somali speakers presented, I could be wrong). So I am not sure where the "no foreign loanwords" comment in the Wikipedia article came from. Then again, maybe I am just reading to much into this name/book cover. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijma

dfc 12y ago
You "also find the name ironic?" Who else found the name ironic? And what is the irony? I have reread your comment three times now and can not identify any irony.
- 616c 12y ago
  I get into it later in my comment: it must be an original concept because no loan words are used in the Somali legal terminology, I point out that might not be true.
  - dfc 12y ago
    "it must be an original concept because no loan words are used in the Somali legal terminology, I point out that might not be true" != irony
    - 616c 12y ago
      So I guess we need a jurist to rule ...

gbog 12y ago

There is this angle that says that natural laws are good, better than "artificial" laws. It seems trendy nowadays and is emphasised in the article. But another angle, that seem to describe more closely the long term evolution and progress of human societies, is that laws and ethics have been slowly built by human societies against the law of nature. The direst way to express this is that in a natural environment, the weak and the disabled are left aside and die quickly, which we humans have decided to try hard to avoid. So maybe a softer, more informal, "stateless" society like this Xeer could be valuable. But if it was, it would be because it would better protect us from the law of nature.

contulluipeste 12y ago
Aside from the law of nature, I remarked the use of precedents as a co-basis for juridical mediation. Although this is something used all over the world outside Somalia (on a secondary role and usually only in an informal manner), its interesting to know it to work somewhere in real-life as a primary law principle.
logicchains 12y ago
>in a natural environment, the weak and the disabled are left aside and die quickly This simply isn't true[1]. Humans evolved feelings like compassion because such cooperation and caring was beneficial to our survival. These emotions exist outside of any deliberate human decision making or social planning. Even monkeys have evolved forms of altruistic behaviour[2]. 'Ethics' in the sense of empathy and compassionate behaviour is hence just as much a part of the 'law of nature' as the more violent behaviours associated with it. 1.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864937/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864937/ 2. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/6-amazing-ways-animals-show-compassion http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/6-amazing-way...
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > Humans evolved feelings like compassion because such cooperation and caring was beneficial to our survival. That's a plausible hypothesis, but considering that it cannot be proven or disproven, it is an ultimately uninteresting one. gbog was talking about social evolution, which is a topic of social sciences. On second thought, perhaps reclassifying evolutionary psychology as a social science would be in order.

neotrinity 12y ago

How is it different from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_self-government_in_India#Early_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_self-government_in_India#... ?? which has been practised from way before 7th century ? [ The Tone of the question is curiosity and not a flame-bait please]

BugBrother 12y ago
I was wondering about similarities to the old "ting" in Scandinavia, which regulated clan feuds, etc. Afaik, some kind of laws are common in clan societies. E.g. blood price, mentioned in the wikipedia article, was common in historical clan societies. (Famously, in Sweden if you killed someone from "Småland" in "Götaland", it was free. :-) ) How different is Xeer?
- LyndsySimon 12y ago
  > I was wondering about similarities to the old "ting" in Scandinavia, which regulated clan feuds, etc. Is this related to the "farthings" of the Icelandic Commonwealth? Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Court_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Court_sy...
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    See the "Althing" in that article. It varied over time, later the laws got written down. And, as the article noted, on Iceland people always were too busy surviving to do as much of the usual clan violence. There are quite a few place names in Sweden with "ting" in them, e.g. "Tingvalla". (I assume it is similar in the other Scandinavian countries.)

antirez 12y ago

That may seem strange, but in Europe there are places where a similar "juridical" system was used too, which is, in Sicily. It was common for Mafia bosses and other respected older people to act as third party in order to judge disputes between people.

genieyclo 12y ago
There are lots of parallels between the mafia system and Somali clan society. You pay your regular dues (in Somali, "qaaraan") that could be spent on anything from helping a destitute clansman get healthcare or a funeral, or help fund a clan militia's war. In return, you're under the protection of the clan on a blood-for-blood basis, guaranteed support and safety when the need arises. Just like the mafia system has it's downsides, so does the Somali system as evidenced by going on several decades of bloodshed now.
- wmt 12y ago
  That seems to parallel some other systems too where you pay the rulers a tax which gets used to fund stuff like healthcare or wars.
  - praxeologist 12y ago
    "That" is a totally imagined mischaracterization of how Xeer law works. See here for how it actually works: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_12/Book_Draft/Systems/SomaliLawChapter.html http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_sy...
- praxeologist 12y ago
  >Just like the mafia system has it's downsides, so does the Somali system as evidenced by going on several decades of bloodshed now. This is an incredibly ignorant statement. The source of bloodshed in Somalia is foreign governments via the UN/AMISOM and their largely Kenyan/Ethiopian troops trying to prop up a government in Mogadishu, as well as the foreign-funded al-Shabaab they fight. This is not some noble jihad for democracy, just various factions struggling for the benefits a monopoly backed by strong foreign powers will bring. The political climate and level of violence in south and southwest Somalia is vastly different than the rest of the region. Beyond Galkayo, there is pretty much no war. In Puntland and Somaliland, Xeer and customary law trumps the weak governments of the autonomous regions. You falsely equate Xeer to the mafia and where the Xeer legal order reigns there is peace in Somalia. A mafia system is identical to a state except a state has public acceptance of the hegemony. The Somali people want Xeer and not state rule. Even during the Barre regime they would not recognize decisions of state courts and would handle the bulk of disputes their own way and ignore state rulings. The decades of bloodshed come from a minority group of western-educated democracy lovers and psychopath "warlords" who have been waging war on the Mogadishu area for the prize of UN recognition and the trough of foreign aid money it brings.

blueskin_ 12y ago

>stateless society Sounds to me like a nicer way of saying failed state, which is what Somalia is.

levosmetalo 12y ago
It's not a failed state since they never tried to build a "state" by the western definition of the word.
iand 12y ago
Why say failed state? Do you presume that all countries must have a state?
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  The alternative is anarchy. Communists like to say that anarchy would be happy rainbows and sharing, but the closest nations we have to it are mostly in Africa, and more resemble feudal warlords than a utopian society.

johnzim 12y ago

From a jurisprudential point of view it's interesting to see how it evolved - the law in England moved out of the church and Xeer appears to have been born out of the reigning power in Somalia (elders) and remained therein. I'll take the English common law and equity any day of the week - flexible where it needs to be so it's capable of applying concepts of natural justice constrained by well established principle, while still providing vital certainty as to the law. This passage in the wikipedia article makes the legal scholar in me shiver: "The lack of a central governing authority means that there is a slight variation in the interpretation of Xeer amongst different communities" Dealing with conflict of laws without prejudicing parties in an international setting is hard enough: imagine having to pursue justice according to discrepancies between individual communities! Better have some cast-iron choice-of-law clauses in those trade agreements!

ianbicking 12y ago
There is an attempt to find a proper jurisdiction: "A case is always heard at the lowest level of the clan that is possible. This ranges from the qoys (nuclear family), up through the reer (closest relatives), jilib (first diya group), and laaf (sub-clan) to the qolo (clan)."

tokenadult 12y ago

"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881) page 1. In other words, the Anglo-American system of common law is a system that has developed by generalizing from particular cases as they come up, and not by thinking from the top down about what kind of rules would be ideal. It's rich with deeper meaning that there are a number of comments here about the development of rules and laws as we comment on an article posted on Wikipedia. I am one of thousands of volunteer editors on Wikipedia (since May 2010) years after having been (1) an editor of a glossy monthly bilingual publication about a foreign country as an expatriate resident of that country, (2) an editor of a series of English-language trade magazines about manufactured products from that same country, and (3) a student-editor (usually the only kind of editor such a publication has) of a law review. I started editing Wikipedia as late as I did, years after Wikipedia was founded, because when I first heard about Wikipedia I thought its editorial policies are madness--and, sure enough, the articles that resulted from the original policy included a lot of cruft. As Wikipedia has continued in existence, it has not been able to continue an Ayn Rand anarchy of bullies but has gradually had to develop rules and procedures and (a little bit of) hierarchy and organization. Most of the articles on the topics I do the most of my professional research in are still LOUSY, and I have been interviewed twice by the Wikipedia Signpost in the last several months about what needs to be done to improve articles on Wikipedia for various WikiProjects. The article kindly submitted here illustrates the problem, with its incoherent presentation of facts and speculation from a mixture of good and poor sources. I live among the largest Somali expatriate community in the world outside Somalia (Minneapolis and its suburbs--we can listen to Somali-language local radio here since the 1990s) and have a new client for my supplementary mathematics classes whose family is from Somalia. That country's internal conditions during my adult life have been HARSH, and I don't envy any Somali patriot's task in trying to build up a country with peace, stability, and justice for all Somali citizens. I do wish all Somalis well in adapted customary legal systems to the modern world.

javert 12y ago
> Ayn Rand anarchy of bullies Ayn Rand has absolutely nothing to do with this, and you shouldn't use her name as a form of generic insult. That is just stupid. Also, Ayn Rand wrote at length against anarchy, so your insult doesn't even make sense. She also wrote at length against the arbitrary use of force, which is what bullies use.

nighthawk24 12y ago

Gram Panchayat in Indian villages often meet under trees too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat

fiatjaf 12y ago

For people interested in common law and the problems of the State law system, I recommend the articles on the topic by John Hasnas: THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW: http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm HAYEK, THE COMMON LAW, AND FLUID DRIVE: http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/NYUFinal.pdf http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/NYUFinal.pdf

praxeologist 12y ago
Hasnas is good. Also consider Benson's Customary Law with Private Means of Resolving Disputes and Dispensing Justice: A Description of a Modern System of Law and Order without State Coercion: http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf
- fiatjaf 12y ago
  Do you ever think about building a framework for injecting an anarchistic customary law into our statist society using cryptography and the Internet? Something like the bitcoin of law? I'm talking about something that could be applied to the real world today, not to a group of crypto-anarchy enthusiasts. I'm also not talking about smart contracts, as these need a legal structure to work and cannot build it themselves. I'm seeking people interested in this subject to exchange ideas.
  - saraid216 12y ago
    Well, let's start with a reasonably understood system: HN karma. Behaviors that follow guidelines are upvoted; behaviors that violate them are downvoted. Guidelines are implicitly created (customary law) by edge-case upvotes and downvotes. What does it not address that your system would need to? (This is not a rhetorical question; it would help me understand what you're trying to achieve.)
    - fiatjaf 12y ago
      You've got the point. I imagine that HN karma is a system very close to the ideal. At first, it would only one things: an interface to the real world. I mean, people breaching contracts and people fulfilling them in the real world should be thrown into this system, and the real world people (which should not need to make a special type of digital contract or something, because they already have their own contracts that should be valid) must be able to use this database of ratings to make decisions.

mcguire 12y ago

"People who have migrated to locations far removed from their homes can also find themselves without adequate representation at Xeer proceedings." That kinda sounds like a problem.

notahacker 12y ago
It's OK, there should be some relatives around to make a restorative payment of camels or wives. Unless they're from a particularly powerful clan, in which case they may be able to avoid paying the Diya even if they can't swing the outcome of the case. Personally I find it quite odd that so many self-proclaimed libertarians are so favourably disposed towards what is essentially a system for punishing the collective for the actions of the individual.

anubiann00b 12y ago

This won't work for large societies (unfortunately).

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