Custom
The Constitution makes no reference to custom. However, the Custom and Adopted Laws Act 1971 provides that the "institutions, customs and usages of the Nauruans" existing prior to the commencement of the Act shall have "full force and effect of law" to regulate certain issues of land ownership, other issues of property and inheritance, and more generally "any matters affecting Nauruans only". A custom is invalid to the extent that it would deprive a person of his or her property without his or her consent, or that it would "deprive the parents of a child of its custody and control without their consent". A custom may be "expressly, or by necessary implication, abolished, altered or limited by any law enacted by Parliament"; statute law prevails over custom.
Read more about this topic: Nauruan Law
Famous quotes containing the word custom:
“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Chrome: her pretty childface smooth as steel, with eyes that would have been at home at the bottom of some deep Atlantic trench, cold gray eyes that lived under terrible pressure. They say she cooked her own cancers for people who crossed her, rococo custom variations that took years to kill you.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)