Customary, from the Latin word consuetudinarius, is an adjective that qualifies what is traditional, frequent or routine. The customary, therefore, is linked to the customary.
For example: “In this region of the country, certain plants have a customary use to alleviate health problems “, “We must not accept violence as something customary or normal: we have to try to eradicate it from our societies”, “The man, a drinker customary and little affection to respect medical suggestions, he died of cirrhosis ”.
At the judicial level, it is called customary law that which is introduced by a custom. In this case, therefore, it can be said that custom is a source of law : it contributes to the creation of legal norms. Another name by which customary law is known is uses or customs.
The customary law is composed of unwritten rules, but complied with by the custom that develops over time in a certain territory. When there is no written norm or a specific law, appeal is made to the customary law that is applicable to a certain fact.
The current doctrine considers that customary law arises from the coexistence of two elements: the conscience of obligation and the generalized and repetitive use. In the first case, the concept refers to the fact that all members of the community consider that a certain conduct constitutes a violation of the principles that organize community life. The generalized and repetitive use, for its part, refers to a behavior that all citizens carry out in a sustained manner over time.
It is necessary to delve more into the concept of source of law, which refers to everything that contributes or has contributed to the creation of all legal rules that can be applied within the framework of a State at a given point in history. The countries that rely on written law, have as sources of fundamental law a series of texts, which can be constitutions, international treaties, regulations or laws.
In the case of customary law, sources are admitted according to subject matter, one of which may be custom, together with the principles of natural law (a doctrine according to which there are human rights that determine their own nature) and the general law enshrined in jurisprudence.
Common law is also considered a legal system, like Anglo-Saxon and continental law. A legal system is a set of norms, ideologies and attitudes that are in force in a State and define the characteristics of the Law, such as its origin, its functions, the way in which it should be applied, understood, perfected and taught.
Despite the fact that current life is largely characterized by the existence of many structures that govern our actions and prevent us from moving freely through nature, it is curious that even today customs are so strong as to influence the decision – making by the authorities of a State.
Of course, Justice is not the only area in which customs have considerable weight and modifying power: often the Royal Spanish Academy accepts new uses and incorrect forms of terms based on the fact that a large portion of Spanish-speaking society prefers them. over the correct ones. This gives rise to various debates on the part of academics, who must adapt to the deformation of the language that took so much effort to learn, but also speaks of the possibility of freely choosing the way to communicate.
