Non-State Justice Institutions: A Matter of Fact and a Matter of Legislation

We look back upon more than two centuries of attempts to establish modern statehood and modern legal systems all over the world. Various forms of non-state justice institutions have existed all along this time, others have emerged only during this period, partly in opposition of the newly created state institutions, partly with the approval of the official state judiciaries and administrations, and not seldom even initiated by the governments. The invention of tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992) and the forming of traditional institutions as an intermediate level in between the state administration and society is a phenomenon to be found not only in African countries, but also in Latin America and South and Central Asia. Either way, non-state justice institutions are a phenomenon of modern statehood. Even the oldest institutions became “non-state” only when modern statehood came in and forced them to adapt to the institutional and normative impositions of modernity.