Customs in Commons--Commons in Court: Fishermen's Customary Practice and Statutory Law Concerning the Cod-Fishery in North-Norwegian Waters

Abstract

"My main purpose with this paper is to throw light on what I here will call fishermen's practice as an informal system of marine resource rights distribution. In the Commons literature, focus is put on conceptualising social and cultural practices in resource systems, that is customs in commons. As I read the court's decision, it took on the technical juridical task of settling whether a legal commons existed in fishing. The court case then, could be seen as a meeting between the informal and the formal system of rights distribution, as well as a meeting between the commons literature's conceptional use of the word commons and current law's practical use. I will close the paper by discussing the court as an arena for settling disputes between these two rights systems, that is commons in court."