… is from the 16th-century English theologian Richard Hooker:
Laws are not which public approbation has not made them so.
(Quoted on page 27 of Will & Ariel Durant’s 1961 book The Age of Reason Begins.)
Translation: laws are not made by sovereign rulers such as legislatures or city councils; all that these bodies can do is to construct legislation and hope that such constructions are able to borrow the respect that is due to genuine laws. Laws are, instead, the emergent rules of social behavior; laws are no more consciously made than are, say, prices in competitive markets.
