AHC: the contemporary legal system in the West is not territorial but ethnic.

WildBoulder

Banned
With the Gombette law for the Burgundians, the Salic law for the Franks, the Breviary of Alaric for the Visigoths..., the legal system in the West was ethnic at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Make sure that this system is still the norm in contemporary times. So, for example, in the United States, let there not be one law for everyone within the federal states boundaries, but a specific law for each community (WASP, Cajun, Irish, Mormon, Amish...).
 
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Altzek

The millet system was especially made of different judicial systems for different ethnoreligious groups in the empire, so assume an Ottoman Empire that succesfully pulls off a restauratio imperii (they claimed to be the successor of Rome, remember), and by the time it collapses there's just too many Muslims all over Europe for their expulsion to be viable as it happened in the Balkans OTL. The Christian successor states are forced to keep the thing, and there you go.

The likeliest POD would be Mehmed II not dying in 1481, repulsing the Christian counter-attack on Otranto and actually conquering Naples and then Rome, but even from here I admit it takes one miracle after another for him and his successors to seize all of Italy, let alone western Europe, so this might count as an Ottoman wank.
 

MusuMankata

WildBoulder said:
With the Gombette law for the Burgundians, the Salic law for the Franks, the Breviary of Alaric for the Visigoths..., the legal system in the West was ethnic at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Make sure that this system is still the norm in contemporary times. So, for example, in the United States, let there not be one law for everyone within the federal states boundaries, but a specific law for each community (WASP, Cajun, Irish, Mormon, Amish...).
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The only way you're going to do this is by changing the rulers' attitudes about controlling their lands. From the end of the Western Roman Empire up to the Congress of Vienna (symbolically at least), having different laws for different parts of society, with different judges and lawyers and so on, was the norm...

The caveat was that, over time, the laws reduced themselves to the national/state law (given by the king and covering everything not covered by the others), church law (covering crimes and problems involving the Catholic Church, obviously did not exist in countries that adhered to the Reformation) and maritme law (which was basically created by merchants and, up until a French codification in the XVIIIth, entirely customary and uncontrollable).

This happened because multiple laws also mean not being able to proprely muster resources and men without the direct consent of everyone involved. Needless to say, once pushes for centralization became strong, this couldn't be allowed, and ethnicity-based laws were also among the first to disappear exactly because of that. A law that is applied on an ethnic basis cannot survive to the end of the conventional feudal system without creating ethnostates, and anything that would keep Europe perpetually in a state where there are no single-ethnicity states but the main corpus of law regards only ethnicity would butterfly the US entirely.
 
Aluma

Aluma

Maybe if you somehow made Rome follow a similar path to India?
With the Servile Rebellions completely failing and the Optimates winning out leading up to a caste-based society
That way by the time break-up states start popping up it is too entrenched to be removed by a pen even if its not very practical, resulting in the Alt-Middle Ages with even more emphasis on socioeconomical and ethnical divisions
 

Wendell

How do you have a functioning society with mutually exclusive law systems existing simultaneously without some jurisdictional overlap?
 

Analytical Engine

Wendell said:
How do you have a functioning society with mutually exclusive law systems existing simultaneously without some jurisdictional overlap?
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Secular and clerical law co-existed in Europe. I'm no sure if they are entirely mutually exclusive, but there were parallel judicial systems.
 

Wendell

Analytical Engine said:
Secular and clerical law co-existed in Europe. I'm no sure if they are entirely mutually exclusive, but there were parallel judicial systems.
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But under those systems, there are laws that apply to everyone even with separate legal systems for various groups in addition to that.
 

Fulano

I don't think you need to go that far in the past for it to happen. You could still have some regions in the world using that kind of system if the situation warrants it, like in multi-ethnic empires where there is not a clearly ethnic majority who dominates over the rest. For example, in a world where Austro-Marxism actually became the leading ideology in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or in an alternate United States of Greater Austria.
In such place a German would only be ruled and judged in a German court by Germans judges using German Law. The same way a Magyar would only be ruled and judged in a Magyar court by Magyar judges using Magyar Law, and so on.
 
Warthog

Warthog

WildBoulder said:
With the Gombette law for the Burgundians, the Salic law for the Franks, the Breviary of Alaric for the Visigoths..., the legal system in the West was ethnic at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Make sure that this system is still the norm in contemporary times. So, for example, in the United States, let there not be one law for everyone within the federal states boundaries, but a specific law for each community (WASP, Cajun, Irish, Mormon, Amish...).
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What would happen to mixed couples and their children?
Jürgen said:
Apartheid
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Ah yes, they also had a solution to the mixed couples question
 
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