Three thoughts led me toward this draft of the Southern Republic’s legal code.

First, I was becoming interested in the idea of establishing some town watches and early policing forces in several cities and then writing episodes or stories about their attempts to provide law and order. So I needed laws for them to enforce.

Second, a historian who wrote a book I enjoyed asserted that in every society, in every time, an oligarchy is directly or indirectly exercising a lot of control upon what happens in a state and maneuvering tirelessly albeit not necessarily coherently to protect its interests.

Third, I hold a copy of Katherine Fischer Drew’s book The Laws of the Salian Franks (1993(1991)) in my personal library, and I noticed one day that the first twelve laws in the legal code focused on guaranteeing the authority of the ruler and protecting the interests of property owners.

What, I wondered, would a legal code look like if it first focused on the rights and well-being of everyone?

I started with Brother Caedmon’s Ten Rights (from my The Restoration War) and borrowed freely from other declarations of rights and legal codes, and I generated “The Laws of the Southern Republic.”