Oral Law

An oral law is a code of conduct in use in a culture , a religion or a particular group, for which a set of rules of human behavior is transmitted by oral tradition and respected in practice or not.

Many cultures have an oral law, while most contemporary legal systems rely on a more formal organization in writing. Oral tradition (from Latin tradere = forward) is the typical transmission codes is oral or, more generally, all of what a culture transmits itself to future generations, "from father to son ". This type of transmission may be due to a lack of other means (illiterate or criminal societies) or may be expressly required by the Act itself (secret societies, etc.)..

From a legal standpoint, an oral law can be:

• a habit , or custom having legal significance, or where the law expressly refers to formal (but in this case, it is an indirect source of legal rights and duties);
• an oral order or command with the force of law (in most modern western legal systems, some provisions may be taken orally in an emergency).

The United Kingdom has an unwritten constitution, a de facto custom ^{The oral law in Judaism}

Although the term " Hebrew " Torah "is often rendered in French by" Law ", its true meaning is closer to" Instruction "or" Education ". The Rabbinic Judaism teaches that the books of the Tanakh were transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition, transmitted by scholars and religious leaders of every generation.
So, in Judaism , the "Written Statement" (Torah she-bi-khtav ) includes the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh , then that "Oral Instruction" (Torah she-peh be'al ), which is nothing other than his exegesis, eventually compiled in the Talmud (literally, "Study") and Midrashim (lit. "Exegesis"). The interpretation of the Oral Torah is considered to have the same authority as the Written Torah. In addition, the Halakha (lit. "the Way", frequently made by the "Jewish Law") is based both on "Oral Statement" that the "Written Statement". The law and Jewish tradition (rabbinic) are not based on a literal reading of the Tanakh, but on the combination of oral and written traditions.

See also

• Constitution
• Jurisprudence
• Oral Tradition
• Revelation
• non-codified constitution

General

• Bibliography
  • Jan Vansina (tr. Wright), "Oral Tradition" (London, 1965); id., "Oral Tradition as History" (Wisconsin, 1985)
  • R. Finnegan, "Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 1977)
  • HB Henig "The Chronology of Oral Tradition" (Oxford, 1974); id., "Oral Historiography (London, 1982)
  • J. Goody & I. Watt, in J. Goody (ed.), "Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 27-68
  • E. Tonkin, "Narrating Our Past" (Cambridge, 1992).
  • Test Finnegan in "History and Theory" 10 (1970), 195-201.

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