Custom

There are jurists who in this case would distinguish custom from prescription, so that if they are debarred from the one, they may fall back upon the other.

For it is well established from the examples taken from the seas of the Spaniards, Portuguese, Venetians, Genoese, and others, that an exclusive right of navigation and a right of prohibiting others from navigation is no more to be acquired by custom than by prescription.

For Ulpian acknowledges that if any one is prohibited from fishing in front of my house, such prohibition is a usurpation of right, allowed, it is true, by custom, but based on no law, and that an action for damages could not be denied the person thus prohibited from fishing.

And the fourth division is the execution of the subjects' affairs according to the customs and dealings they are accustomed to, in which they have differed until they came to be knit together by them;

let us flee it like a dangerous headland, or the menace of Charybdis, or the fabled Sirens.

Custom is the common judgment of those who practise it, an unwritten law of a nation or a city, a justice that is voluntary, pleasing all alike, the discovery of no man, but of life and of time.

I may be a slave and weak as well, but the gods are strong, and Custom too which prevails over them, for by custom it is that we believe in them and set up boundaries of right and wrong for our lives.

Custom determines even our natural ties, making the most bitter foes friends, and regarding as foes those who formerly were friends.

You should be self-effacing in your attitude toward my authority, abiding by our customs and preserving the royal laws, but conspicuous in your services on behalf of the state and in the other duties which are assigned to you by my command.

For it is generally from these that custom takes its rise, drawing its beginning from some ignorance or simplicity, and is then strengthened into a practice by succession, and so is upheld against the truth.

Truth was content to make a pact with custom, so that, silently, under the name of custom, it might enjoy itself even in part.

There is this institution also somewhere under this sky of ours, lest anyone should ascribe that custom to Greek or barbarian heathenism.

Where a decision is made based on local usage, inference, or the approval of the community, there the general rule of legal procedure is superseded.

Where the king sets aside established custom and makes a decision anew, that is the king's edict, and by it, custom is superseded.

The law of a particular region which has been in practice for all time and is not in conflict with the Vedas and Smṛti, is called regional custom (*deśadṛṣṭa*).

When a sovereign makes a decision according to that rule (custom), then legal procedure is superseded by that custom.

But when a custom is established by kings that is contrary to reason, then that custom should be set aside by a royal command.