I came across Lord Moulton’s incredible essay titled “Law and Manners” while listening to the EconTalk podcast. In his essay, Moulton discusses unwritten rules, or the Obedience of the Unforceable, that fall between Positive Law and Free Choice. The central tenet of the essay is that Positive Law provides a necessary but not sufficient framework for regulating human manners. He, therefore, argues that manners are crucial in maintaining social stratum. Here is a direct quote from the essay that emphasizes this theme —
“In order to explain my title I must ask you to follow me in examining the three great domains of human action. First comes the domain of positive law, where our actions are prescribed by laws which must be obeyed. Next comes the domain of free choice, which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom. But between these two there is a third large and important domain in which there rules neither positive law nor absolute freedom. In that domain there is no law which inexorably determines our course of action, and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would. The degree of this sense of a lack of complete freedom in this domain varies in every case. It grades from a consciousness of a duty nearly as strong as positive law to a feeling that the matter is all but a question of personal choice. Some might wish to parcel out this domain into separate countries, calling one, for instance, the domain of duty, another the domain of public spirit, another the domain of good form; but I prefer to look at it as all one domain, for it has one and the same characteristic throughout — it is the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable. The obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself.”