Law
Somalis for centuries have practiced a form of customary law, which they call Xeer. Xeer is a polycentric legal system where there is no monopolistic agent that determines what the law should be or how it should be interpreted.
The Xeer legal system is assumed to have developed exclusively in the Horn of Africa since approximately the 7th century. There is no evidence that it developed elsewhere or was greatly influenced by any foreign legal system. The fact that Somali legal terminology is practically devoid of loan words from foreign languages suggests that Xeer is truly indigenous.
The Xeer legal system also requires a certain amount of specialization of different functions within the legal framework. Thus, one can find odayal (judges), xeer boggeyaal (jurists), guurtiyaal (detectives), garxajiyaal (attorneys), murkhaatiyal (witnesses) and waranle (police officers) to enforce the law.
Xeer is defined by a few fundamental tenets that are immutable and which closely approximate the principle of jus cogens in international law:
- Payment of blood money (locally referred to as diya)
- Assuring good inter-clan relations by treating women justly, negotiating with "peace emissaries" in good faith, and sparing the lives of socially protected groups (e.g. children, women, the pious, poets and guests).
- Family obligations such as the payment of dowry, and sanctions for eloping.
- Rules pertaining to the management of resources such as the use of pasture land, water, and other natural resources.
- Providing financial support to married female relatives and newlyweds.
- Donating livestock and other assets to the poor.
Read more about this topic: Somali People
Famous quotes containing the word law:
“A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The times have changed. Why do you make a fuss
For privilege when there’s no law of form?”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)