Is the law complex? It is. Does it seem confusing? It sometimes does. Yet, the grey of the law seduces. Its lack of certainty is beguiling.

Louisiana lawmakers asked in 1823 whether their local laws were "so voluminous, so obscure, so contradictory, that human intellect however enlarged, human life however prolonged would be insufficient to understand, or even to peruse them." The situation is demonstrably worse today. Excessive and obscure legislation was bad organisation then and remains poor planning now.

The contingency of the law is good. Why? Because law, on the march and in action, is tentative, just as we are tentative. It is insecure, just as we are insecure.

An examination of these unsettling propositions is today's topic because ideas and notions of law discretely underscore all other columns in this space and because all of us are stakeholders in the law and its tradition.

The ways in which the law is learned, taught, practiced, understood and applied here in these Islands constitute our legal tradition. It is officially reported that Bermuda's tradition is the law of England as it stood in 1612 except as later amended. Who can testify as to the law of 1612? Find that person. Bermuda's law is the tradition of its people of today, of tomorrow and of recent memory.

So, what is the law? Should we care, and why should we be glad that it is messy?

Some people on Front Street might think of the law as a string of dismissive sovereign pronouncements without ethical direction. Or, they may think of the law as random get-rich schemes.

Yet, sensible people have always talked about the law as a complex of truthful ideas and moral propositions of ways to regulate the conduct of people in society among themselves, in their relations to things and in their dealings with the State.

These people also know that law is produced bottom-up. Every year more law is made washing dishes and better law is generated where people drink, eat and sleep than our House of Assembly could ever reasonably contemplate enacting.

Throughout the ages, the law has aspired, and still earnestly wishes, to put in place good rules for good social order for people of flesh. It harkens for a healthy relativism attuned to the community. It accepts the pluralism of social, economic and moral values. Good law does not endeavour to reconcile these values under a single truth. A book of absolute truths is a manual for robots.

In the good law of today for the people of now, there is a place for every person's socially tempered autonomy. Thus, good law is responsive to the aspirations of citizens and rejoices in the specificity of personality. It is a statement of the human condition, and the human condition is annoyingly untidy.

Each citizen is one-of-one, but each is also one-of-many since all citizens belong to political, social and economic communities. Citizens are called to co-operate with each other, and to demonstrate a high level of respect for the way by which a person fashions her private and public life and the degree to which her life is, aptly and fortunately, strange.

Indeed, the law addresses this strangeness by considering the essential qualities of a person under a topic nicely called personality. Legal personality is the starting-point for all law-talk. Its premise is that we are all bound to each other as a community but, as individuals, are free to be odd in the nature of our legal relations and in the choice of the parties with whom we relate.

An understanding of legal personality is also indispensable for correctly establishing the boundaries of the private law — for example, the laws of contracts and property — and for identifying the number and quality of civil rights. Civil rights are rights that, in and of themselves, justify private law operations. They do not seek nor do they need the endorsement of the State and the public law. They are inherent in the person and suffice for all legal acts and facts. These rights and duties are not constant. Each legal operation individually and the aggregate of all operations add texture to the assembled attributes of personality.

As we are messy, so the law takes on subtle hues and fashions itself to the patterns of our lives. As each of us is different, so also are legal solutions distinct. As solutions multiply, so too is a society rich with law and order. For, order is born of mud.

In Bermuda as elsewhere, the public is inclined to the view that any novel exposition of the constituents of freedom of action, dignity, autonomy, diversity, intimacy or privacy is a top-down development. The government tells us whether we have rights and what they may be.

In fact, new rights and freedoms (and their associated duties) are the products of motivated individuals and grassroots movements. Governments, however, would have us believe that rights are concessions of the State.

In our daily cooperations and in our constant and informal relations with neighbours, we should know that we are the makers of the law and that good law is elastic. It is relative because no human experience is historically identical.

In the abstract, life and law look messy. In the concrete, that's splendid.

* Attorney Michael McAuley is a member of the Trusts Practice Group of Appleby. Copies of Mr. McAuley's columns can be obtained on the Appleby website at www.applebyglobal.com. This column should not be used as a substitute for professional legal advice. Before proceeding with any matters discussed here, persons are advised to consult with a lawyer.