Coscivian law

Coscivian law (Koskix álda) is a system of laws and legal principles, procedures, and institutions derived from the law of the Coscivian Empires. Along with Sharia law and the Occidental models of civil law and common law, Coscivian law is one of the world's major legal traditions. Today, Coscivian law in its pure form is applied in most jurisdictions of the Kiravian Federacy and Collectivity and its associated states. It may also influence the legal systems of countries with a Kiravian colonial heritage.

Origins and History

The celebrated jurist X.L. Ixtralargin periodised the development of Coscivian law thus:

• Fundamental stage - Law as a system for peaceful conflict resolution between tribes and clans, beginning with the Lawful Commonwealth.
• Civil stage - Law as a system for maintaining a state society, beginning in the Iron Age with the consolidation of the Coscivian Empire as a territorial state in competition with other states. Distinctions between criminal and civil law emerge.
• Justicial stage - Law as a system for realising and upholding social values, influenced by Shaftonism, organised Coscivian religions, and later Christianity, with more transcendental, abstract, and personalist notions of rights and justice.
• Constitutional stage - Law as a system for ordering and balancing competing interests in a complex society, beginning in the Early Modern period.

In Ixtralargin's paradigm, each successive stage of development built upon, but *did not replace* the contributions of the preceding stage, resulting in a complex, layered body of legal norms, practices, and principles.

Foundations

Notions of law, lawfulness, legality are closely tied to the development of Coscivian civilisation and Coscivian identity. According to tradition, primitive agricultural Kirav was a violent and brutish environment characterised by near-constant endemic warfare between small tribal units, and widespread murderous practices such as infanticide and uxoricide within tribes due to both ritual demand and resource scarcity. Lifespans were extremely short, with the prelude to the Great Law Chant, the fundamental "text" of Coscivian law, recalling that "mere beards - not white but rich with ūmar were the mark of the elder; fortunate and few were those who survived to full manhood, for the earth was bathed in the young blood of hairless youth." It was only with the rise of the Emperors, through their imposition of the Four Laws and patronage of the Four Rites, that communities were able to know peace and order. This nascent stage of Coscivian civilisation, known as the 'Lawful Commonwealth', was a tribal confederacy rather than a proper state, without an administration or defined territory. The subjects of early Coscivian law, then, were groups (tribes and clans) rather than individuals: the law mainly concerned itself with the resolution of conflicts among such collectives and the redress of transgressions by one group against another, and relied heavily on tribes and clans to enforce punishments and satisfy judgements against their errant members.

Sources of Law

Coscivian law is the result of synergetic fusion between law "from above" - law imposed by state authorities - and law "from below" that emerges organically from history and custom or dynamically from the judicial process. This two-tiered system reflects the history of the Coscivian Empires and their successors extending their authority over wide areas populated by diverse, internally self-governing local communities, and the consequent need to synthesise the Law of the Emperor with the Law of the Land.

Law from Below

Customary Law

The Coscivian legal system emerged from the extension of Imperial authority into new areas and over new peoples, during times when clans, tribes, and castes, rather than organs of the state, were the dominant institutions in Kiravian life and had more effective powers of enforcement and coërcion over errant individuals than the sword of the state.

Customary law continues to inform modern Coscivian law, especially in matters of domestic relations, inheritance, and property. To a much greater degree than other modern legal systems, Coscivian jurisdictions give consideration to the established and documented traditions of ethnic/caste groups and localised communities when formulating judgements.

Accepted Wisdom

"Accepted wisdom" is a body of maxims and adages expressing legal norms and principles that are considered to be authoritative ipso facto and shape the operative culture of the legal system. Many are of ancient and uncertain provenance, and plenty are likely misattributed to major figures like Shafto the Wise or prominent Emperors. In modern times, accepted wisdom tends to originate from judicial opinions in frequently cited cases.

Law from Above

Edicts

Edicts are decrees of Coscivian Emperors that are considered to be general and binding in nature and enduring in legal relevance. Modern decrees issued by the Executive College exercising imperial prerogatives are not considered to be edicts.

Stórnoálda

Literally "meta-law" or "law-of-laws", stórnoálda refers to constitutional law. In a narrow sense, its subject is written constitutions and the corpora of case law surrounding them, and in a broad sense it overlaps with edicts and other sources of higher law.

Distinctive features

• Crimes Against the System - Crimes such as judicial corruption, perjury, jury intimidation, witness intimidation/tampering, evidence tampering, perfidy, treason, usurpation, et al. that undermine the fundamental trusts an mechanisms upon which Lawful civil order depends carry severe punishments, in most cases death until modern times. The death penalty is still applicable and applied for many such crimes in many such cases, but other severe (if less permanent) punishments are on hand as well.

• Judicial Consensus - Case law is made not through precedent but rather through a process in which a holding that gets cited often enough by other judges may be ruled to represent consensus by a “third” judge. It is possible for a superior court to overturn such a ruling of consensus. Only the Federal Consistory or (in theory) the Emperor himself can overturn their own rulings of consensus.

Contemporary Coscivian legal systems

Coscivian law is the prevailing tradition in the Kiravian federal legal system, as well as the legal systems of its provinces and associates. New Ardmore is the sole exception: Its legal system is based primarily on Ardish common law, with influences from Brehon law. The legal system of each Kiravian province is separate from the others, with different customary bases and different bodies of consensus.

See also

• Incarceration in Kiravia
• Marital and family law in Kiravia