In fact, of course, the law affects the villages profoundly and in many ways. The main obvious impact is threefold. First, administrative law and regulations, and especially the Village Law, sets out the formal arrangements for village institutions and for relations between village and state. Secondly, the villagers are frequently charged in the criminal courts, mainly for breaches of the peace and acts of violence. Thirdly, rights to land can only be finally decided by the civil courts. As I have shown z] (p. 209) the effect of those parts of the Civil Code that govern marriage and the family have at present almost no bearing on the village.
All bureaucratic and political institutions are shaped by law, even though what happens never corresponds exactly to the intentions of the legislator, or even to the provisions of the law. The impact of general constitutional and administrative law on the village is relatively indirect; but one law does directly shape village formal institutions. The Village Law (No. 442), of March 1924 (Robinson, (1949) letter 24) was one of the earliest acts of the Republic. With a few important exceptions the law is remarkable for its irrelevance. It serves rather as a document of the attitudes to the villages of a paternalistic ruling class than as the legal basis of village organisation.
After a section defining a village and laying down regulations about boundaries, the second chapter contains two lists, one of things villages must do, and one of things which villages may choose to do, with legal power to coerce defaulters. This first list contains thirty-seven items, including such matters as the building of a covered drain, the type of privy to be used, the building of two village streets to cross in a village square, the separation of all living-rooms from stabling by a wall, the construction not only of a school but of a mosque, the proper maintenance of the land and property of orphans by the village authorities. It is even forbidden to tire animals unnecessarily.
The list of permitted activities, thirty-one items long, includes the setting up of various trades in the villages, the pro-