ABSTRACT
The rules of law stand out from the rest in that they are felt and regarded as the obligations of one person and the rightful claims of another. As a matter of fact the dogma of automatic obedience that is the absolute rigidity of the rules of custom implies an over-emphasis of criminal law in primitive communities and a corresponding denial of the possibility of civil law. 'Civil law,' the positive law governing all the phases of tribal life, consists then of a body of binding obligations, regarded as a right by one party and acknowledged as a duty by the other and publicity inherent in the structure of their society. These rules of civil law are elastic and possess a certain latitude. Crime is the only legal problem to be studied in primitive communities, there is no civil law among savages, nor any civil jurisprudence for anthropology to work out.
